What are you trying to change?

Nearly everyone is looking to change something: business results, the quality of a relationship, physical health, job satisfaction, the color of your living room walls… I like to call these desired changes Performance, and a change in Performance requires a change in Perspective.

Any change must begin with a change in perspective. One must see things in a new way to recognize new possibilities for performance — for necessary action. One will not perform in the new ways necessary to produce new results without new perspective.

A change in perspective requires a fresh look at the assumptions you make about yourself, your current circumstances, subject or object of focus, the actions you are taking, or your results. What results are you getting now? What are you doing to produce these results? What assumptions are you making that drive these actions?

Shift Perspective to Shift Performance
Specifically, what new results do you want? What new assumptions might you need to “try on”? How might these new assumptions drive new, necessary behaviors? What behaviors might be needed for you to get those new results?

Just as behaviors repeated often become Habits, our assumptions, over time, become Habits, too; we call these habitual assumptions Attitudes. It’s not easy to change a behavioral habit, so it’s no easier to change a habit of thought — to change an attitude. It may even take a greater discipline and Practice to replace an old habit with a new one than it does to develop a habit in the first place.

Let’s face it: you are getting your current results because you are in the Habit of getting those results. Your Performance won’t change without Practicing new Habits, and new habits require a disciplined change in Perspective.

Chances are, you cannot do it alone.