Is this hard or what?

Why don’t more people adopt sustainable practices in their lives? The need is clear, the data is all around us – so what’s the hold-up?

And, oh yeah, why does progress on the community level take so long?

As I told my buddy Phil Duran the other morning, when he asked me the latter question, I could lecture on the subject for three days, but I’m not sure I know the answer.  Some observations…

• Progress is indeed slow, here as anywhere.
• Our habits die very slowly, in part we keep reinforcing them, in spite of what we may understand to the contrary.
• An interesting form of inertia does operate: a phenomenon known as “path dependency”.  Think of the path as habit on a societal level, and dependency grows from ingrained, expected normality of all of us doing things the same way over and over again, because we become convinced this is the way the system works, and it is what’s expected of good, normal people.

Here are research results from my friend John D. Adams, prominent organizational psychologist and author of a cool book entitled, Thinking Today As If Tomorrow Mattered.  John interviewed people about what they did to make an important change in their life.

In other words, how does a big change in a person’s life stay changed?  John reported on the patterns as follows.

In 90% of the cases, success depended on all of these factors being present:

1. Understanding and accepting the need for a change.  (Okay, so this one’s obvious.  Read on.)
2. Belief that the change is both desirable and possible.  (Emphasis on belief in a new reality.)
3. Passionate commitment (Old-fashioned sticking with it).
4. Specific measurable outcome and a clear first step.
5. Structure or program that reinforces repetitive discipline around implementation of a new behavior pattern.  Did I mention repetition?
6. Social Support / feelings of safety during tough moments of passage
7. Variety in available mental tools (if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail).
8. Patience and perseverance.  (Duh.)

It’s work, and it it’s important.  It takes commitment, and it only lasts if there is strong personal support from credible friends and family.  If you want to make a change, ask for help.

Ralph