Come On Josie, You Can Do It!

Josie has been scooting along with her own unique crawling style since early May. She had her first birthday at the end of June. In July, standing up - holding on to a reliable piece of furniture or adult became the norm. August brought the fun game of looking adorable for an adult so they'd take you for a walk. Here it is September and Josie is four steps away from walking by herself.

I've been watching Josie. She stands, holding on - one hand is okay - and lets go. She stands un-tethered and looks around. Finds something across the room of interest. Plops down and crawls full speed to get it. Why take the risk of walking when crawling gets the job done?

The resistance to change starts early! Since Josie’s parents think she’s too young, she hasn’t attended one of my programs. I’ve tried a one-on-one, talking to her, explaining that walking is a much more efficient mode of movement and once she changes, she’ll no longer have those dirty knees. None of these techniques is very compelling to a one-year-old. Josie knows she can get what she wants by doing what she knows. Until she learns that walking is to HER advantage, she’s not going to change.

It occurs to me that many of the techniques used by organizations embarking on change initiatives aren’t very compelling to their people either. Since it appears we learned resistance at or before the age of one, we’ve had many years to perfect the resistance of change. I’m going to keep an eye on Josie’s progress and see if I can figure out when she sees the initiative to change as her own idea and a benefit to her. I’ll keep you posted.

Comments

[Penny Steward]

Ah, Chris, being a grandmother too, I understand the lessons little ones can show us. And certainly resistance to change starts early. Isn't this because our survival is hard wired to attain pleasure and avoid pain with the least expenditure of energy possible?

My expertise as The Human Energy Specialist is helping people change their lifestyle habits -- believe me, you have not seen resistance to change until you watch people try to change what and how they eat, exercise, sleep, perceive, and stress! The only drivers for change I have discovered in my clients are pain or fear of imminent death due to disease, and sometimes even they are not enough to push people into change! To prevent is not human nature. So, my job is to help them change their beliefs so they can change their behaviors. Amazingly, despite the ever rising lifestyle disease (cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc.)rates, people still don't believe it can happen to them and keep doing what they are doing until it is too late.

I have found this is because we don't recognize the slow changes, we just know that this is the way it is now and accept it. Like a perponderance of auto flush toilets, or blogging as a way of communicating -- they just become a part of our way of life without us noticing much. My fear is that we will start accepting that half our life spans are slowly being devoted to spending our time and money on disease instead of living our lives to the fullest. Having seen the joy that optimal health, energy, body fat, and immunity can bring people when they do change their beliefs through education and therefore change their lifestyle habits, I can only hope that we don't let this expanded morbidity concept sneak up on us to become an accepted part of our lives. That is not the kind of legacy I want to leave our grandchildren......