KBTV

The Willpower Myth

January has traditionally been heralded as the month of new beginnings – a time when hundreds of thousands of people set out to change their lives for the better. “I’ll lose 10 pounds…quit smoking…eat better…go to the gym”…They all start with good intentions but by mid February end up falling horribly short.

If this has ever happened to you, you’ve probably found yourself thinking…as everyone else does...“Gee, if only I had tried a little bit harder. If only I had a little stronger willpower I could have done it.” Well, it turns out that this kind of thinking is dead wrong. When researchers examine the actual mechanism of change – they find something much different.

This is the hypothesis set out by Alan Deutschman, the author of the book "Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life" which hit bookshelves this month. Deutschman set out to get to the bottom of whatever it is that makes people and business realize a drastic change, even in the face of multiple failures. What he found is that people don’t use willpower to “unstuck” themselves from a vice. Instead it’s a relationship with a person or a group who shows them the way – an emotional relationship – one that inspires hope and belief.

Deutschman was convinced that something besides willpower had to be the catalyst for change after hearing some startling statistics from a doctor from Johns Hopkins University while at a conference. Nine out of 10 heart bypass patients fail to make the lifestyle changes necessary to save their lives!! Though the pain was so terrible they could barely walk, his patients couldn’t stop smoking or eating steaks and they didn’t start going to the gym. Instead they endured multiple bypass surgeries — which are painful and cost more than $100,000. For these people, the mantra “Change or Die” was quite literally the case and most chose the latter.

So, if people dying from clogged arteries can’t be motivated to change their life, where does that leave the rest of us? Deutschman asked that same thing when he stumbled across a doctor in San Francisco. Dean Ornish was turning those numbers on their heads. Ornish had his patients, many of them steak-eating CEO’s, sticking to a low-fat vegetarian diet and doing regular yoga and meditation. Even after they completed his one-year program most of his patients stuck with their dramatic lifestyle changes.

Deutschman found that the key to these changes wasn’t willpower – it was relating. The first of something he calls the “Three R's to Transformation.” When these CEOs had to attend support groups and classes twice a week, they were surrounded by other steak-eating, work-a-holic CEOs who had changed their diet and their life. When they saw their peers could do it, they too were able to make changes and stick with them.

The second R in Deutschman’s road to successful change is repeating. Once you’ve formed a relationship with a mentor or a group you need to acquire the skills necessary to change and keep practicing, repeating them until they feel natural.

The final component to Deutschman’s three-step plan for change is reframing. Basically, changing the way you think. For example, if you’re a work-a-holic, you won’t be able to relax more until you accept that not working 70 hours a week doesn’t make you lazy or unproductive and that it actually will help you work better.

So why does all this work? Well, as Deutschman put it, “So often we think that change is impossible, that people don’t change, that we can’t change. But you can’t argue with a living breathing person in front of you who has done it, and modeling yourself on them is the best way to do the same.”

posted by Jason Parsley @ 11:00 AM