Deciding to change...

In simple terms, there are three steps to personal change :

1. Understanding that it is your choice to change
2. Deciding to change
3. Changing

I have written a few times about the first step - even though some of our options can be incredibly difficult, they are still our choices to make - and the third step, actually changing, is in some ways the easiest - sure it can involve a lot of hard work, skill-building and perseverance, but making a change is ultimately logistics…

In fact, the hardest part of personal change is the second step, because for change to succeed we need to deeply and fundamentally decide that this time we are going to do what it takes, that we have a deep-enough reason to see us through the tough days, and that carrying on as before is no longer an option.

So if our past attempts to change haven’t worked, maybe it’s not that we failed to try, maybe it’s that we failed to decide…