If you’ve ever tried to change a negative behavior, you know that it takes time and practice to see results. Change can take even longer and have more setbacks when you are only solving the problem at the surface.
For example, let’s say you are trying to be more tolerant of an irritating colleague. Instead of responding with a rude facial expression, a harsh email or cold silence, you are trying to be more calm and measured. For a lucky few, it will work to recognize the circumstances that trigger your response and ingrain new responses to the same stimuli. But for most people, change will require digging a bit deeper into what really drives your negative behavior. Here are some questions you could ask yourself to dig deeper:
- What is your ideal reaction to the situation? Why is it important that you react that way?
- If you acted in the ideal way, what would you still worry about?
- If you acted in the ideal way, how could that affect you negatively?
- How does your negative behavior protect you?
These are some initial questions that help clarify why you are committed to your negative behavior. There’s a strong chance that your negative behavior somehow protects you. Once you uncover these commitments to self-protection, you’ll start to understand why changing your negative behavior isn’t so easy.
The next step is to look at your self-protection commitments as a whole and think about how you could continue to protect yourself, and also try to achieve the positive behavior changes you desire. In this case, how can you be more tolerant of an irritating colleague while also protecting your need to be heard/respected/etc.? This will be a process of trial and error, finding new behaviors that satisfy two different objectives.
This type of more thoughtful behavioral change requires patience and creativity, but is ultimately more sustainable.
Feel free to reach out to lauren@evoluteconsult.com with questions.
