In Dr. Phil’s Living by Design podcast, his second episode is chocked so full of good stuff, I am going to cover it in two posts. We began this series about a week ago, with my original post introducing this lovely podcast. His second episode has proved to be just as good!
Dr. Phil talks about four stages of readiness for change. I quote:
Stage 1: is when you are going to commit to a change because is has been assigned by authority. Dr. Phil gives the example of a court ordered anger management program or a mandatory rehab program. He notes that these types of programs generally don’t work to facilitate change as the person is not personally invested in the program.
Stage 2: is when you are making a change because somebody else wants you to – you don’t really want to change, but you do it to please someone else. Dr. Phil notes that the chance of achieving meaningful change is slight – perhaps a bit more than stage 1, but not much.
Stage 3: is when you intellectually know you need to change – you don’t really feel it, but at least in your mind you know it needs to be done. Dr. Phil gives the example of smoking; perhaps you know that it is time, it isn’t good for you, your health is starting to show its effects, so we can white-knuckle ourselves through it and still get to change.
Stage 4: is where real change happens. It is when you are mentally and emotionally ready for a change; when you can look in the mirror and say “I will not take this from myself for one minute longer – I will face my fear and make the changes necessary to see real results.”
I appreciate Dr. Phil spelling it out for us; very often we can feel some inner resistance to change and perhaps this can be a starting point in our journey. Maybe step 1 is to do some self-reflection as to what stage of readiness we are in so as to get a clearer picture of the path we need to take to get to our goals.
To listen to the podcast: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/dr-phil/phil-in-the-blanks/e/58729660
Photo credit: http://Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash
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