Change Doesn't Happen Without a Destination

Set the scene.

They come in the office, frustrated, annoyed and generally not in the mood to discuss anything. When you probe at the reasons for their attitude, they jump down your throat saying everything is a waste of time because nothing works. They are trying to change, doing shit the way you tell them and still getting nowhere. None of this fucking works! This is the time you have to remind them success in change takes more then just deciding to change. They need to focus and decide on what change looks like.

Unfocused change doesn't work. You must have a clear place identified that you want to head towards in order to make your effort effective. This means having an idea of where you are wanting to end up. This location can adapt as you get closer to you predefined change, but without some sort of destination to heads towards, you will only find frustration and failure.

This all sounds so simple, too simple. When you first start working towards change, it seems that all you need to do is decide to change and as long as you keep trying, the change will happen. While deciding to change and starting are great, they leave out one of the most important parts of the process - the destination. Take a moment and think about this:

Could you get anywhere if you didn't have an idea of where you were headed?

If you decided you wanted to take a road trip, but had no plan of where you were going, where would you end up? You'd, in all likelihood, be sitting at home, frustrated that you weren't getting anywhere. Or you would walk out the door, get in your car and drive somewhere, anywhere. But again, you would quickly be frustrated with driving around aimlessly, and either become bored, or angry, and then head back home to sit on the couch. Nothing accomplished.

If this is how you are approaching change - driving around aimlessly, with a desire to do something - then you will not have any sustained success. You can't just want change, or have some vague idea of what change is, or what change might look like. Because if you don't know what you want to achieve by changing, beyond just being different then you were before, then you will just be creating frustration and failure. You will quickly find yourself thinking, "Why try? This just won't work."

You have to know where you want to go in order to have a direction in which to head. You must know what you want to achieve and what you will get from achieving that goal. Once you set this solid, identifiable direction you will then need to put effort into thinking about how you will get there.

The process has to be in this order:
Set the Destination then get the Directions.

With a destination in mind you can then refine the directions to get you there. Of course, you can change the exact destination as you are moving if something better, or more appropriate, appears on the horizon. But you will never really start, or accomplish a change in your life, if you haven't set what that change means and looks like to you.

The key to all of this is to make certain you start by deciding where you want to go, then start creating the map to get there. Without doing that you will never be able to get out the door.