When I was a teenager, I underwent a personal change. The process of changing myself was a difficult road to walk. I had to overcome a lot of internal reluctance to accomplish the changes that I needed to make. Furthermore, this changing process is a continuous one, and to this day I am still trying to maintain the changes that I made when I was fourteen years old. To be successful in this endeavor, on a daily basis, I have to overcome my internal resistance to the habits and patterns of thought that I established years ago.
Until I was 14 years old, I struggled with my weight. I was overweight, and I was unhappy about it. I knew that my weight was due to overeating, but I did not know how to change my habits or my diet. I also had no fondness for exercise when I was 14; I hated it, in fact. I dreaded P.E. and was always the last to finish the mile run at around 14 minutes. I was also not a member of any athletic clubs and never participated in any organized sports.
I desperately wanted the shape and size of my body to change, but I did not want to develop the habits necessary to accomplish that change. I just did not want to go to the effort of changing myself. I enjoyed eating food too much, especially junk food and sweets; eating comforted me and gave me a place of refuge that I was reluctant to give up. And I loathed exercise. Even ten minutes of jogging was enough to exhaust me. I also was afraid of working out because I was shy about my body, and did not want other people to gawk at me at the gym. Due to my lethargy, self-indulgence, and self-consciousness, I had a low tolerance for change.
Daszko and Sheinberg (2005) write:
Transformation is what happens when people see the world through a new lens of knowledge and are able to create an infrastructure, never before envisioned, to the future. (p. 2)
When I started my freshman year of high school, I realized that I would never have the body I wanted to be unless I made a conscious effort to change. Seeing my life through this new lens of knowledge for the first time, I decided that I would begin to make changes to achieve the life I wanted – the life of a person who was not overweight. However, I knew this would be a difficult feat to accomplish. I would have to learn to overcome the internal factors that caused my resistance to change. The life of a non-overweight person was still a leap and a bound away, and the thought of trying to reach this goal was intimidating to me. Still, I knew that there were small steps that I could take that would bring me closer to this life. The steps that I took to initiate and carry out my personal transformation closely followed Kotter’s theory for change.
Kotter’s change model is an eight-step process that begins with “creating urgency” (Kotter, 2012). I began my transformation by inculcating a sense of urgency about my need to lose weight and become healthier. I knew that my quality of life was at stake, and I began to treat the need for change with due seriousness.
The second step in the eight-step process is to “build a guiding coalition.” This meant assembling a support group that would facilitate the change that I needed to undertake. My support group was my parents, who supported me by buying me a gym membership, and later, a personal trainer who I met at this gym, and with whom I would plan fitness and weight loss goals.
The third step is to “form a strategic vision.” Although I already had a goal in mind – to achieve a healthy weight – I still needed to formulate a plan of action. I developed a plan that included counting calories and abstaining from sugary sweets. This was difficult at first, because for a long time, junk food had been my comfort. However, the more often I turned down junk food, the easier it became to exclude it from my daily diet, and the easier it became to overcome my internal resistance to my new habits. I gradually reformed my habits and views toward eating. My new plan also included going to the gym every day. As I practiced this habit, I gradually reformed my views toward exercise as well.
The next step is “communicate the vision.” This step primarily applies to organizational change, but I believe it applies to my own personal change as well. The way this step manifested for my change journey was for me to be open and honest with myself about my progress, or lack thereof. Thus, “communicating the vision” became a matter of reminding myself, on a daily basis, of the goal that I was trying to reach, and being accountable to myself for keeping my resolution. Maintaining this sense of personal accountability would help me keep my old habits, like my habit of overeating out of stress, in check.
The fifth step of Kotter’s change model is to “remove obstacles.” My parents helped me with this step by ceasing to buy junk food. This way, the temptation to break my new habits of eating primarily healthy food became less intense. By removing unhealthy foods from our kitchen, my parents helped mitigate the causes of my resistance to change.
The sixth step is to “create short term wins,” which I did by creating targets for my workouts as well as my weight. Since I had lots of goals to work toward, such as running my fastest mile, doing a record number of pushups, eating healthy for three days straight, or losing half a pound, I gave myself lots of opportunities for success. The seventh step is to build on and sustain the change, which I did through the continuous practice of my new habits. What followed was a change in my mindset. After a few months of watching my diet and selecting healthy foods over unhealthy ones, I no longer turned to sugary and fatty foods for comfort, nor did I have a desire to. Junk food, instead of being my source of self-soothing when I was upset or sad, became just an occasional treat, to be enjoyed no more than a few times a week. I also began to view exercise in a different light. Where I had once detested running, I began to enjoy it immensely. I discovered running and other forms of exercise to be a profoundly meditative experience. After I completed a run or a weightlifting session, I found that I felt relaxed and self-satisfied. Gradually, exercise replaced eating junk food as my method of relaxing and finding comfort during times of stress.
Daszko, Macur, and Sheinberg (2005) emphasize that there are four stages in the creation of permanent change– awakening, intention, learning, and action. These stages represent the stages of a cycle, rather than a linear progression that ends at a definite point. The process of change is ongoing, meaning it does not end, but continues indefinitely. Thus, the eighth step of Kotter’s change model, anchoring the change, never really ended for me. My transformation from an unhealthy person to a healthy one is an ongoing process. While I did eventually reach my goal weight, it requires daily vigilance to stay at that weight. I have to be careful to maintain my regimen of diet and exercise or else I will risk reverting to the habits that had previously made me overweight. And presently, maintaining a good figure is less important to me than being healthy and fit is. In the process of overcoming my resistance to change and reforming my habits and views toward eating and exercising, I learned that being fit feels better than being unfit. I have more energy, feel more alert, and generally enjoy life more as a healthy person. My goals also changed from when I started the transformation process. Now, instead of focusing only on no longer being overweight, I am also concerned with maintaining my health and staying fit so I can enjoy my life better.
References
Daszko, M., Macur, K.,& Sheinberg, S. (2005). Transformation: A definition, a theory, and the challenge of transforming.
Daszko, M. & Sheinberg, S. (2005). Survival is Optional: Only leaders with new knowledge can lead the transformation. Transformation, 1-12.
Kotter, J. (2012). The 8-step process for leading change. Kotter International.
