[The #1 Most Important Lesson]

1 . Decide what you really want and what's preventing you from
having it now.

The first step to creating any change is deciding what you want, so that
you have something to move toward.


2. Get Leverage: Associate massive pain to not changing now and
massive pleasure to the experience of changing now!

Why don't people change even when they know they should? Because they
associate more pain to making the change than to not changing. They have
mixed emotions, linking both pain and pleasure to changing.

Virtually anyone will turn around ifthey get to a pain threshold, where they
say," I've had it! I can't stay like this another minute!" When they get
themselves to the point where they must change, because staying the same
would be too painful. This is called leverage.

To help them to get leverage, ask pain-inducing questions : i .e "What will it
cost you ifyou don't change?" The second step is to ask pleasureassociating
questions to help them link positive sensations to the idea of
changing, i .e. " Ifyou do make this change, how will that make you feel about
yourself?"

3 . Interrupt the limiting pattern

The definition of insanity is "doing the same things over and over again and
expecting a different result" . If you want to get different results, you
must get yourselve to do something different.

Often, people have secondary gain which serves to maintain their behaviour -
their behaviour gives them something that's positive . They may say they want
to change, but often they subconsciously believe that maintaining the old

behaviour or emotional pattern gives them something they couldn't get any
other way. In order to resolve this, we have to give them enough leverage that
they must change, but also show them a new way to get their needs met.If we allow them to keep running the same old pattern, they're going to keep

getting the same old results. The big question is whether these patterns of
behaviour are really helping them to get what they want, whether they are
harmful for themselves and others, and whether or not they will be beneficial
to them in the long term.

In the short term there may be no real adverse
consequences to many of their behaviours, at least, none with any leverage on
them.

One of the best ways to interrupt someone's pattern is to do something they
don't expect. The more outrageous your approach, the more effective it will
be.

One of the key distinctions to interrupting a pattern is that you must do it in
the moment the pattern is recurring. They pull their normal stunts and you
react differently to how they expect. It's akin to scratching a record
repeatedly with a needle - pretty soon it will never play the same way again.

4 . Create a new, empowering alternative

A Study of Nancy Mann into rehabilitation of drug abusers showed that only
those who replaced their addiction with a new alternative made lasting
changes in their drug use.

Unless we help them to find alternative ways of getting out of pain and into
feelings of pleasure, their change will never last in the long term .The
benefits of the old feelings or behaviours must be preserved by the new
behaviours or feelings while eliminating the negative side effects.


5 . Condition the new pattern until it is consistent.

Conditioning is the way to ensure that a change you create is consistent and
lasts long term.

The Law of Reinforcement:
"Any pattern of behaviour that is continually reinforced will become an
automatic and conditioned response. Anything we fail to reinforce will
eventually dissipate ."Reinforcement is not the same as punishment and reward.

Reinforcement is responding to a behaviour immediately after it occurs, while punishment
and reward may occur long afterward .

Timing is absolutely crucial to effective conditioning so that the sensations
of reinforcement are linked to the pattern of behaviour that is occurring.

Reinforcement must be scheduled. In the beginning, every time they
perform the behaviour, it must be reinforced. Once a behaviour is
established, you should move to a variable schedule of reinforcement, so
that the reinforcement is not taken for granted and they are still driven by the
possibility of reward but uncertain as to which try will be rewarded.

Reinforce on a random basis so that it doesn't become predictable or boring .
To reinforce their behaviour long term, you may also want to use a fixed
schedule of reinforcement, where you reward them at the end of a period of
time or a series of behaviours .

This should not be the only reward, or they
will only do the minimum expected. You need to add in occasional surprises
- like recognition, bonuses, etc - so that they will put forth the extra effort in
the hope of receiving acknowledgement.

A third conditioning tool is the jackpot, where, once in a rare while you give
them a large reward for their behaviour, so that they begin to anticipate that
if they put in an extra effort there might be a huge reward . This principle
can also be used to create a "jump-start' for those that are unmotivated .

The pleasure that it creates may be enough to break their old pattern and put
them into a state of pleasure such that they are willing to get involved .


Now...test it!