Change : what really leads to lasting personal transformation

672 Pages·2014·3 MB·English

by  Kottler, Jeffrey A

Change
CHANGE
What Really Leads to Lasting Personal
Transformation
Jeffrey A. Kottler
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kottler, Jeffrey A.
Change : what really leads to lasting personal transformation / Jeffrey Kottler.
Change : what really leads to lasting personal transformation / Jeffrey Kottler.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978–0–19–998138–0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Change (Psychology) I.
Title.
BF637.C4K677 2013
155.2′5—dc23 2013016480
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Preface
Chapter 1 The Mystery of Change
Chapter 2 Obstacles and Challenges That Compromise Efforts to Change
Chapter 3 When Lives Are Transformed
Chapter 4 Life-Changing Stories
Chapter 5 The Benefits of Hitting Bottom
Chapter 6 Growth Through Trauma
Chapter 7 Changing in Psychotherapy
Chapter 8 Transformative Travel and Spiritual Journeys
Chapter 9 Moments of Clarity That Change Everything
Chapter 10 Reducing Stress and Facing Fears
Chapter 11 Creating Meaning and Happiness
Chapter 12 Changing People’s Lives While Transforming Your Own
Chapter 13 Soliciting Support and Resolving Conflicts in Relationships
Chapter 14 Why Changes Don’t Often Last
Notes
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As with most writing projects, this one represents a collaboration with a
number of contributors, as well as a remarkable editor with whom I have
worked for a long time. I wish to thank Dana Bliss, Senior Editor at Oxford, for
his consistent support and critical input for this project, and so many others
during the past few years. I’m also grateful for the assistance of Oxford
production staff, including Emily Perry and Benjamin Suazo.
There were a number of scholars and researchers who generously agreed to
act as reviewers for this book, providing valuable feedback and critical
suggestions, at times challenging me to look more closely at issues and alter my
thinking. I’m especially indebted to Geoffrey Greif and Meg Selig, who offered
a number of suggestions for digging deeper into the subject.
There were hundreds of individuals who shared their stories of
transformation with me, only a small fraction of whom are explicitly
acknowledged: Katie Robertson, Jamie Littleton, Sarah Childers, Rodney
Anderson, Angelica Vasquez, Spencer MacDonald, Sherrill Wiseman, Matt
Englar-Carlson, Erica Law, Jamie Alger, Spencer MacDonald, Emily Liwanag,
Cynthia Marcolina, Yasamin Amaya, Lori Thomas, Cary Kottler, Lori Drozd,
Nadia Muhaidly, Sheila McCabe, Joanna Fick, Meghan Quinn, Christina
Spinella, Dawn Hoekman, Jacalyn Schoen, Brian Pfeffer, Katie McAuliffe, Jay
Christian, and Briana Hammonds.
PREFACE
Think of a time in which you overcame a significant, chronic, intractable
problem that challenged you for years. This was a pattern of self-defeating
behavior that plagued and sabotaged you in all kinds of ways. Then, somehow,
you managed to completely turn things around in such a way that the changes
persist to this day. What is your best understanding of how this happened and
what made the greatest difference?
It is entirely possible that your explanation, based on an imperfect and
reconstructed memory, might very well correspond with the recollections of a
therapist, supervisor, teacher, parent, coach, or mentor who played an
instrumental role. It is far more likely, however, that your reasoning might touch
on other factors and influences that were never overtly recognized and honored.
Perhaps it wasn’t what was actually said or done by someone who assisted you
that was most impactful, but rather, a cascade of other events that occurred
indirectly or tangentially from that experience. If you conduct your own self-
study, you will likely identify many of the same factors that will be covered in
the pages that follow.
As we begin this journey together, it’s important that we are realistic and
honest with one another: What are the chances this book will change you? Or
more significantly, what’s the likelihood that something you might learn within
these pages will stick with you long enough to help promote some meaningful
improvement in your life satisfaction, happiness, or quality of life? Based on
prior experiences, you’d have to admit that the prognosis is guarded, especially
if you don’t initiate constructive action. To bolster this point, just consider how
many books or self-help programs you’ve consulted in your life that promise
some kind of deliverance but leave you less than satisfied. On the other hand,
sometimes we seamlessly integrate whatever we learn without an explicit
awareness of what happened and why. That’s one of the interesting and
intriguing things about exploring change processes: even after centuries of
systematic study, we still don’t really know what’s going on.
You’d think after all these years of dedicated research, study, investigation,
and clinical practice we would have a pretty good idea about what most
consistently and effectively leads to change in people’s lives. Philosophers,
writers, educators, psychologists, neurobiologists, and other scientists have
writers, educators, psychologists, neurobiologists, and other scientists have
spent the past few centuries exploring the factors that produce significant
transformations in people’s lives whether they take place in the context of
recovery from trauma or crisis, solitary reflection, collaborative relationships,
travel experiences, reading or listening to stories, classrooms, psychotherapy,
religious conversions, or serendipitous events. There is certainly no shortage of
theories (hundreds) and books (thousands) on the subject, each proposing its
own singular answers that run the gambit from finding meaning or initiating
lifestyle changes to divine intervention.
I have been researching and writing about change for 35 years, adding
dozens of tomes to the stack, each intended to guide change agents such as
teachers, counselors, psychotherapists, and organizational leaders in their efforts
to more effectively help others. Yet with all this devotion and commitment to
understanding why and how people change, I am still often puzzled by what
appears to be most helpful. For instance, a client I had been seeing in therapy
just left my office and I have no idea what, if anything we said or did during the
previous hour, had any lasting impact. He seemed to understand what we were
doing, that nothing much would change in his life until he stopped dwelling on
his situation and instead began reaching out to others, but who knows whether
he would actually follow through on his intentions? Did he really provide an
accurate report? And if so, could we ever determine what had the most
influence?
The truth of the matter is that I often feel confused and frustrated about the
impact of my work, whether as a psychologist, professor, writer, or director of a
charity, that anything I’m doing is having much of an impact. In spite of all the
self-improvement books published each year, it’s more than a little ironic that
there is an increasing demand for them precisely because the lessons learned
don’t last very long. That’s not to say that books such as this one are not useful
because there’s a lot of evidence indicating that they can be remarkably
1
efficient, cost-effective, and powerful instruments for transforming lives.
Similarly, consulting a therapist for problems provides some benefit most of the
2
time (estimated between 75% and 90%). But the really interesting part is that
although we know that certain actions and resources tend to produce favorable
results, we still aren’t clear about the underlying mechanisms that initiate and
maintain these outcomes.
Making changes is actually the easy part. Relatively speaking, it isn’t that
difficult to stop smoking, lose weight, end a relationship, stop a bad habit, learn
a new behavior, or gain some new insight or awareness; the really difficult
3
challenge is to maintain the momentum over time. And the prognosis for
maintaining changes is pretty dismal with the vast majority of programs failing
within a few days or weeks. The truth is that as much as we might think we
understand about what helps people to improve their lives, we have barely
scratched the surface.
This book seeks to bring together much of what is known about change
processes, from a variety of sources, studies, disciplines, and approaches, and
integrates this knowledge into the most important principles that have proven
most effective over time. It represents a lifetime of data gathering, story
collection, research, and reflection, on what seems to make the greatest
difference in people’s lives across a broad spectrum of situations, individual
differences, and cultural contexts. It is a compilation of everything that I’ve
learned, plus a whole lot more that fell into place during the past few years
talking to people about what not only transformed them, but just as
significantly, how and why the changes stick with them over time.
There are several questions that beg for more definitive answers, many of
which will be addressed in the pages that follow:
1. Why do people avoid and resist changes that they know are absolutely necessary for their well-
being?
2. How is it that people “decide” to change?
3. Why is it that changes can be both gradual and incremental, or sudden and dramatic shifts?
4. When exposed to trauma or disasters, why do some people become incapacitated and dysfunctional
while others grow significantly as a result of the adversity?
5. What are the tipping points that spark a cascade of incremental changes?
6. Why don’t most changes seem to stick, even when they obviously provide satisfying outcomes?
7. What can be done to prevent relapses?
8. If there are universal features of most successful efforts, how can they be structured in such a way to
promote lasting changes?
Although we will be exploring these and other questions, this is not a book that
synthesizes all the research in the field, nor does it aim to present some kind of
unified conceptual framework that explains how change works. The phenomena
are far too complex and multilayered to present some simplistic explanation, or
a single set of variables. The experts in the field are, themselves, passionately
committed to particular models that often contradict one another or present
diametrically opposite explanations. There is compelling evidence, for instance,
to support the idea that in order to make constructive and enduring changes in
present behavior, you first have to come to terms with influences from the past.
As persuasive as this argument is, there are equally convincing studies that
demonstrate that for some situations and problems it is far better to ignore what