Opening Insights: Not What, but HOW
Over the years there has been much research into patient outcomes and patient satisfaction. Many suggestions have been made to suggest and influence patient outcomes, many to no avail. While displaying ones certificates for the patients to see may influence their trust of the doctor and likelihood of following directions short-term, long-term compliance and follow through remains a challenge and predictable disappointment. The issue is not one of what to do, but HOW to do it.
Research done by Johns Hopkins University, clearly documents that challenge that not just medicine but any discipline trying to implement change in today’s world faces, that being that 90% of people will not change even if their lives depend on it.* So many of us want to change… but often find ourselves quickly reverting back to our own ways.
Informational Insights: Why is behavior change so hard?
The problem is that from the age of 0 to 7 our beliefs are formed. These are decisions that where made for us by our primitive brains, in order to adapt and survive our world. These survival mechanisms developed into reactionary behaviors (habits) designed to protect us, however, unlike in primitive times when we learned fight or flight reactions to protect us from the venomous snake, the ravenous wolves and the poison berries; our primitive brains attempted to protect us from the emotional (relational) influences of others and that’s were things started to go wrong.
Our brains are extraordinarily efficient at learning the behaviors that we repeat and then helping us to perform those behaviors in the future without having to engage the conscious decision to do them.
The habit learning system allows us to engage behaviors quickly and without extensive deliberation. Because the brain is an energy intensive organ, the less time we spend deliberating about behaviors, the lower the energy cost of behavior. So, the brain typically operates to minimize the amount of time spent making decisions.
In order to overcome the power of past experience, you need a comprehensive approach to change your behavior that helps you avoid the old behaviors and perform the new ones often enough to allow them to become habits.**
Of course we need our primitive brains and reactions to learn how to adapt and survive our pre-verbal and pre-cognitive years, however, our learned reactions and beliefs are not necessarily healthy, especially if we were raised in dysfunctional or unhealthy environments. If we never learn growing up that we can SEPARATE, LET GO from our beliefs and CHOOSE another way (CHOOSE TO CHANGE), as we get older these reactionary behaviors and ways of thinking often obstruct and destruct our lives and relationships and we come to believe “THIS IS HOW I AM, I CAN NEVER CHANGE.”
It is not that we CANNOT CHANGE, it is that our EDUCATION SYSTEMS, SOCIAL SYSTEMS and RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS have failed to teach people and show people, how to change! In fact some social schools like psychology believe that we can’t, while neuroscience is only now waking up to the realities of neuroplasticty. Industrialized education system fails to teach “character” as Aristotle would say, and balanced “whole brain thinking” it teach WHAT TO THINK (like logical robots), HOW TO THINK (like rational critical thinkers and mature contributors to life).
Secular Education today is more concerned with kids passing the test than learning how to live and function as emotionally mature, intelligent critical thinkers. Thus while we may have many intelligent people in the world, we have a lack of emotional intelligent balance learners – able to easily flow with the tides of change. When this follows us into adulthood we have problems in our relationships, jobs, lives and being as we continue to react to life playing our the same beliefs of others (the beliefs we learned) we learned as children.
In order for change to happened and people to experience the power of change we need to realize, that we have a CHOICE.
We have a choice whether to continue walking down the same path or a new one.
The problem is that in order to become aware that we have a choice, we need to learn how and why we have a choice… We need to become EMPOWERED, CRITICAL THINKERS. Sure no problem, you may think. But there is a problem because our beliefs are hard-wired, well practiced and entrenched in our ways of being and relating. So to break the cycle and change and exercise one’s freedom of CHOICE is not simple a decision, rather its is one that has to be made and experienced on a conscious and experiential level over and over again, until it becomes our automatic response.
Additionally, many successful people will tell you: “if you want to be successful, you need to surround yourself with successful people.” Hence in order to experience a new way it is best to be in an environment where the freedom of CHOICE is respected and encouraged… A patient group, a community group, a family group where EMPOWERMENT and CRITICAL THINKING forms the backbone of the community.
Wonderful you may say but how do we make this happen… its quite simple within a Pocket Wisdom Insights Co-Lab Incubator Community dedicated the field or cause. Pocket Wisdom Insights Co-Lab Incubators are not your average Incubator because they don’t just offer a collaborative environment with all the technology tools to communicate and connect with all stakeholders. Pocket Wisdom Insights Incubators provide the tools, resources and applications to teach, create, implement, measure and sustain cultures of empowered critical thinkers… open and willing to change [click here to learn more]
*Source: //www.fastcompany.com/52717/change-or-die
**Source: Art Markman //www.science20.com/art_markman/science_change-122696
Possibilities for Consideration: Changing Behavior
Take a moment and examine…
- As you reviewed the material above, what stood out to you?
- What is the potential impact, economically and/or socially?
- What action is needed to stop or support this idea?
- You may want to consider whether you:
- want to be aware of,
- should become supportive of,
- would want to be active in this topic?
Add Your Insight: Change Is Possible
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do.
LEONARDO DA VINCI