September 2003

Creating lasting changes

by Dr. Dennis Nikitow

Have you ever wanted to make changes in your life, and found yourself staying in the same place struggling, stressing and getting more overwhelmed? Like a car stuck in the mud you push harder on the gas pedal doing the same thing and getting nowhere, except deeper and deeper in the mud! The insane part of this is you want to change, but keep doing the same thing hoping for a different result.

Years ago, I learned six simple steps developed by Tony Robbins to enable a person to make empowering changes in his or her life. Whether you want to lose weight, change your attitude, change spiritually, be more organized, improve relationships, or build your practice, these six steps will put enough leverage on you to make the changes ‑‑ and make them stick.

Once you use these and become proficient at them, you will be able to facilitate changes in people around you to help them overcome the stuck‑in‑the‑mud life they are leading. Applied to your practice this will increase patient starts, family referrals and retention for wellness programs.

1. The first point may seem simple but it's the most important of all. Decide. Decide what you want to change, and be specific! Then ask yourself what you want to change TO. What do you want to get rid of and what do you want instead? How badly do you want to change? If you had to stay where you are, how would you feel today, and in the next few years? Now, think of what you want to change to. How would you see your life changing? How would you feel then?

Next, ask yourself what's preventing you from changing? I guarantee that you have some limiting belief, fear or uncertainty that links more pain to changing then staying where you are. The reason we don't change is that we have mixed neuro‑associations. This means you aren't associating enough pain with staying where you are or enough pleasure to where you could be.

2. Therefore, the second key is to get leverage on yourself by linking more pain to where you are, than changing. How have you been robbing yourself by not changing? Are your beliefs consistent with the way you've been living? Most of the time they're not so, you need to raise your standards.

People tend to compartmentalize their behaviors, making certain actions "okay" that are out of character for who they are or what they really believe. This drives them crazy! An example is a doctor who smokes and drinks but, tries to tell his patients about good nutrition.

To leverage yourself, list your values. Ask yourself what's most important to you in your life, marriage, business, etc. Set boundaries in your life based on who you really are. Are your current actions ripping you off of the life you want to live? Are you getting secondary gain from not changing, i.e., some secondary pleasure, comfort, support or attention that you would not get if you changed? Think of more ways it would be pleasurable to make the change.

3. Now, make a list of the things you are doing or not doing to stay where you are. Identify the patterns you follow. When you get pressured, for instance, you may be quick to anger, or turn to a bad habit like drinking or smoking, or take it out on your spouse by arguing. What you need to do is write down "pattern interrupts" to do when you start to get into these states.

Ask yourself certain questions to focus your mind in another direction. Exercise, do certain movements, think of certain pictures, thoughts or events that will force you to change your association. Sing a specific song. Scramble words or pictures, so everything around you looks like a cartoon.

If you trust God, pray for His help to help you change and think of a prayer or Bible verse to repeat and turn to when you begin to get into the state you want to change.

The point is INTERRUPT your pattern. Practice this by thinking of the thing you want to change and as soon as you associate to it or start to get the feeling from it, go immediately into your pattern interrupt, until the feeling subsides. (For more techniques refer to Tony Robbins' "Personal Power" and "Awaken The Giant Within.")

4. Create an empowering alternative to the thing you are changing. You must know where you want to be or what you want to change to, and you must stick pleasure to it.

For example, exercise briskly and drink a lot of water whenever you want to smoke or drink alcohol. Every time you keep from going to the mall to spend money you don't have and put it in your savings plan instead, celebrate with a romantic evening with your spouse! You'll begin to see that spending quality time with each other is more endearing than trying to buy your happiness with material things. You must create an empowering alternative or your change won't stick.

5. Condition the new pattern by making it a habit. Set up a system to change your pattern of doing things until you do it automatically. Conditioning means reinforcing a pattern to change your behavior. If you have a system you will condition a pattern of doing things.

This is why our seminar and home study course works so well. It's a "system" of communication strategies to reposition patients to wellness thinking. The system conditions doctors and staff to a new communication pattern until it's become ingrained ‑‑ a habit. Repositioning of patients from using chiropractic for back pain to seeing you as part of the health care team for wellness becomes easy.

Conditioning your pattern also involves anchoring it to something that will trigger that state or feeling. A good example is what you do when your favorite sport team makes the winning shot, goal or touchdown. What do you do or say? How do you stand? That's a "position anchor."

If you do the same thing when you're making your change, your neuro‑association will be pleasure to the change and you will feel pleasure in doing it. Then, by firing that anchor voluntarily you should be able to reproduce your positive state, or at least neutralize the negative one.

6. The last thing is to test your change by "future pacing" it. Imagine your change and how your life will be with that change. Fire your anchor as you think of yourself in an old pattern and see whether it changes your state to your new feelings of pleasure. If not, repeat steps one through five. My favorite anchors are prayers and Bible verses. Choose something that moves you, or you won't change.

Once you've gotten good at these six steps, write down your patients' obstacles and apply the six steps to facilitate them to change. My audio tapes can help you with these communication strategies. Good luck.