Oh, change! You thrill us, you scare us, you give us hope and heartburn. Why are you so hard even when we are excited about you?
One of my favorite ways to start some work on change is a bit old school, but works every time.I have participants pair up, take a good look at each other, then turn back to back. While back to back, I ask them to change three things about themselves. Next, they return to facing their partner and try to identify the changes that person made. It generates some laughs, sometimes a touch of discomfort, and makes a point about obvious, visible change.
Then comes the hard part.
After the first round, I ask the participants to turn back to back again and this time change ten (10!) things about themselves. That’s when it gets
- noisy – “Wait, she said 10 things??!!”
- funny – some things you can never un-see
- revealing – hello resistance!
Changing Your Watch to the Other Wrist
The exercise continues in the same way. I ask participants to turn face to face again and try to identify what has changed in the other. I also, very clearly and very specifically, give the direction not to change anything back.
Then the processing begins. We talk about how some change was okay, but the direction for ten at once was overwhelming. We identify the feelings they experienced in response to the two different sets of directions – feelings about the activity and feelings specifically about me as the person asking them to change. Discussion ensues about how they came up with ideas of what to change and what was just a step too far for them (but maybe not others in the group). Someone inevitably says that they changed their mind and that takes us down a fabulous path of exploring how the most powerful changes can be invisible and what that means across any number of settings.
And they try to change back. Just the feeling of having their watch on the “wrong” wrist is nearly overwhelming. Parting their hair on the opposite side, shoes on the wrong feet, a wedding ring removed, a shirt untucked – each of these is nearly too much change to handle for even the 10 minutes or so we spend in conversation, despite the relative meaninglessness.
So is it any wonder that real change, the kind with consequences and questioning, the kind that requires commitment, can be overwhelming? If wearing your watch on the opposite wrist is so uncomfortable as to be distracting, how much more so is change that engages your beliefs and values, your habits and favorite ways of doing things, your comfort zones?
Moving my watch over now just to practice.