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This week, let’s talk about one of the Four Dynamics of Success: Choice and Change.
And in case perhaps anyone is unclear on the concept of a dynamic, dictionary.com defines it as, “An interactive system or process, especially one involving competing or conflicting forces.” When we speak of the Four Dynamics, they are a force that pushes dialectically in any direction that you want to take them, so they don’t necessary conflict as they move you forward on the path that you wish to take. For example, you zig-zag back and forth, but you always come back in the middle. When you are in the middle, you go left or right to continue to zig and zag, but once you have gone left or right, you need to go back left or right as a natural process that takes you back into the center and propels you forward, and then away you go again. The Four Dynamics are designed to allow you to examine the forces that you make choices with, and the direction you decide to take your mind and life.
So the choices we make consciously and the changes (events we can't control) are in conflict: We want to take as much control, by making our own choices, as possible. That way we take control of our lives rather than allow ourselves to live solely in reaction to outside forces.
Let’s start by exploring change. Change happens to us whether we like it or not.
Even if we consciously decide to do nothing, change will affect us. We grow older. Relationships change. Our world changes. People we know and care about move away, or die.
Behaviorists’ mental models fit into this dynamic. Many would say that we create our own change and the things that happen to us throughout our life are because of our choices.
How we end up in life is about the choices we make, and how we react to change.
If you have a bad relationship, you can decide what you want to do in the relationship, but you cannot change what the other person in the relationship chooses.
Events happen in your life. These events may or may not be traumatic to you as an individual. What is perceived as traumatic in one person’s life may not be in someone else’s. Those perceptions could affect and limit a person’s ability to make quality choices that improve his or her life.
I read a story about one person who ran for president of his class in middle school. He lost. While most of the time our adolescent issues become less important as we become adults, this one became an event that he carried into middle age: His perception was that he was a loser, and no one loved him. To a lot of us an event like that would probably affect how we feel for a short time, but then we would move on.
We don’t know what will affect us as we travel through life, but we need to know that losses or events are not permanent. They are simply bumps in the road on a long path through life.
We may not even know that an event has affected us so deeply. As we grow older we may not even be aware at the time of an event that what happens to us is so life-changing.
If it were just a matter of making choices in our lives, would we not all want to be well off? Doing the things that we want to do? Focusing on the things in life that make us happy?
Life is not just about choice, but making a conscious choice is a start to get moving if you want to go somewhere else.
You can choose what you want to change in your relationship with someone else. You can choose to get another job. You can choose to lose some weight. You choose to quit some behavior that is holding you back. So why is it that oftentimes you don’t have success in achieving this “conscious choice” behavior?
You want to, and yet every time you say to yourself, “I am going to change,” you don’t. You make a choice and it doesn’t seem to come true.
That is why we talk about four interrelated dynamics, not just this one focusing on Choice vs. Change. If you don’t subconsciously see yourself being what you are choosing, pick the right attitude, develop the proper mental model framework, and have the choice to change reflected in your personal values, how can the choice that you want to make become a reality?
If your internal world doesn’t see all of the Dynamics in harmony, your world won’t change. You may see a small, short-term gain, but for true effective change you need to invest the time in developing all the Dynamics in your life.
The next time that you want to make a choice to make a change, sit down with all of the Four Dynamics and come up with a complete game plan that is more than just a will to get things done.
It really works better, and in the long run the extra time spent makes it easier.
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