Change or Die! Research shows that your chance of failure is over 90%

Remember the quote “if you have done what you have always done, you will get what you have always gotten”?

Adding to this, “if you have done what you have always done with the same Values & Behaviors, you will get what you have always gotten because your action will be based upon the same Values & Behaviors”.

* Values = Why we do what we do.

* Behaviors = How we do what we do.

What if you had once chance to find the missing link and you didn’t take it?

Personalized Values & Behaviors Assessment and Values & Behaviors 1 hour Telephone Assessment Debriefing Session with Simon Reilly:

The “Change or Die” magazine title blazed off the cover of Fast Company Magazine, May 2005, Issue 95.

The article is written from a medical perspective and goes onto saying that whether you are trying to make changes in either your personal or business lives your chance of failure is over 90%.

What is staggering is;

– 90% of people two years after coronary-artery bypass grafting have not changed their lifestyle and I’ll leave it to your imagination to determine the end result.
– About 600,000 people have bypasses and 1.3 million heart patients have angioplasties every year in the United States at a total cost of around $30 billion consuming 80% of the health-care budget.

So why is change so hard?

The 90% of people two years after surgery lived the way they did as a strategy for coping with their emotional troubles and they chose to consume themselves with the following five behavioral issues rather than change; too much smoking, drinking, eating, and stress, and not enough exercise.

The article goes on to say that Doctors had been trying to motivate patients mainly with the fear of death and it isn’t working. For a few weeks after a heart attack, patients get scared enough to do whatever their doctors said. But death was just too frightening to think about, so their denial would return, and they’d go back to their old coping ways.

Telling people that are coping and suppressing their emotions just to get by that they’re going to live longer if they quit smoking or change their diet and lifestyle is not that motivating. What is the point of living or building a business if you are in chronic emotional pain?

So if the motivation of dying isn’t working, then what is going to motivate you to make the changes in your business or personal lives?

The article goes onto say that a link is missing and that even though people with heart disease know they have a very bad disease and they know they should change their lifestyle, for whatever reason, they can’t.

It is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing behavior and that behavioral change happens mostly by speaking to people’s feelings.

Some of the preceding ideas where developed from “Change or Die” – Fast Company Magazine, May 2005, Issue 95. Page 53 by: Alan Deutschman. If you want a copy of the full article e-mail me at: sreilly@leadingadvisor.com with “Change or Die” in the subject line.