You know the old line: the only person who wants to change is a wet baby.
In workshops they get you to list the 5 most important things in your life. Invariably health is number 1 or 2. So what are you going to do to improve your health, lose weight etc? Probably nothing.
A new Fast Company article Change or Die discusses a new health change program that can apply to the rest of our lives.
The conventional wisdom says that crisis is a powerful motivator for
change. But severe heart disease is among the most serious of personal
crises, and it doesn't motivate -- at least not nearly enough. Nor does
giving people accurate analyses and factual information about their
situations. What works? Why, in general, is change so incredibly
difficult for people? What is it about how our brains are wired that
resists change so tenaciously? Why do we fight even what we know to be
in our own vital interests?
The article cites research which shows that 90% of heart patients refuse to change their lifestyle. It tells the story of Dr Dean Ornish who devised a program in which 77% of the patients change their lifestyle permanently.
Why does the Ornish program succeed while the conventional approach
has failed? For starters, Ornish recasts the reasons for change.
Doctors had been trying to motivate patients mainly with the fear of
death, he says, and that simply wasn't working. For a few weeks after a
heart attack, patients were scared enough to do whatever their doctors
said. But death was just too frightening to think about, so their
denial would return, and they'd go back to their old ways.
The patients lived the way they did as a day-to-day strategy for
coping with their emotional troubles. "Telling people who are lonely
and depressed that they're going to live longer if they quit smoking or
change their diet and lifestyle is not that motivating," Ornish says.
"Who wants to live longer when you're in chronic emotional pain?"
So instead of trying to motivate them with the "fear of dying,"
Ornish reframes the issue. He inspires a new vision of the "joy of
living" -- convincing them they can feel better, not just live longer.
That means enjoying the things that make daily life pleasurable, like
making love or even taking long walks without the pain caused by their
disease. "Joy is a more powerful motivator than fear," he says...
Paradoxically, he found that radical, sweeping, comprehensive changes
are often easier for people than small, incremental ones. For example,
he says that people who make moderate changes in their diets get the
worst of both worlds: They feel deprived and hungry because they aren't
eating everything they want, but they aren't making big enough changes
to quickly see an improvement in how they feel, or in measurements such
as weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol. But the heart patients who
went on Ornish's tough, radical program saw quick, dramatic results,
reporting a 91% decrease in frequency of chest pain in the first month.
"These rapid improvements are a powerful motivator," he says. "When
people who have had so much chest pain that they can't work, or make
love, or even walk across the street without intense suffering find
that they are able to do all of those things without pain in only a few
weeks, then they often say, 'These are choices worth making.' "
Are there lessons for business? Absolutely. The article gives examples of successful change from IBM, Xerox and other companies. Read it.
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