- Image by homer4k via Flickr
Think about wearing your most favourite, comfortable shoes. No effort to put them on, and, one they are on, it is almost like they are a part of you.
Your habits are like this: they have become comfortable and easy to ‘wear’, having shaped themselves to your apparent needs perfectly. So comfortable, indeed, that often we are largely unaware of their presence. So what insights might this metaphor illuminate?
- Change requires (a) that you realise that your old comfortable ‘shoes’ are no longer really serving you well and (b) that you decide that it is time to change them. Sometimes, the best place for our old comfortable shoes is the bin.
- Changing to a new habit is sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes painful. Just as new shoes produce blisters, new habits take some time to become comfortable.
- Spending a lot of time investigating your replacement might ensure the best alternative is found, but unless you put the ‘new shoes’ on and get on with breaking them in, nothing changes.
- Your habits may not, in fact will most likely not fit someone else’s needs. Just because your habits are comfortable and effective does not automatically fit another person. Picture the image of someone else trying your comfortable shoes on: the way that your feet have moulded he shoes would almost certainly mean that the fit is far from perfect for them (quite apart from sizing differences). Giving advice, hence, is a poor growth tool, unless you give them the chance to shape the advice into their thinking maps. One way to allow this shaping to occur is to follow any advice with the coaching question “how does that fit your thinking?”
Summarising then, awareness, reflection, clarity, insight and action are all necessary in changing those outdated habits. Oh, and giving someone else your old comfortable shoes is not always as generous as you might think…
