“Change,” as my mentor Jack Hawley once said, “can take forever or happen in the twinkle of an eye.”
Becoming the person we want to be – our aspirational self – is challenge and opportunity.
It’s encumbered or advantaged in part by who we are, our real self, who we’ve been – our past self, and who we think we ought to be – our should self.
We build up habits both of mind and action that get strong coded within us. One of the discoveries from the neuroscience of implicit bias, for example, is that the plethora of social images conditions our brain to certain default behaviors, whether we know them or not. Check out Harvard’s Project Implicit Project here for an example on you.
Change is not so much about stamping out old habits – ineffective according to the work done by Charles Duhigg – but rather building new improved modes of behavior that you can use instead.
While much change work is compliance based – don’t have that extra beer if you want to lose weight, don’t say sexist things at the workplace or you’ll get fired – it’s efficacy is limited. It’s the rear wheel drive of change and coaching, rather than the far more effective pull of front wheel drive. And the neuroscience research regarding helping coaching for change demonstrates it.
So George Eliot may have been right; “It is never too late to be who you might have been.”
But only with purposeful vision and help along with way. For an example of help, check out Case Western’s program, based on the work of Richard Boyatzis and Tony Jacks, for supporting personal change, leadership development, and enhanced coaching capability for yourself and with others here.
Every day is indeed a second chance to be the person you might have been.
I am a San Francisco-based executive, leadership and startup team coach More about my 30+ years of work in the field can be found at the “About J. Mike Smith and Back West, Inc.” sidebar at the Back West blog. Now welcoming new and known clients.