Have you attempted New Year's resolutions, but the effort fell short?  The book I've been studying the past seven weeks, Changing for Good, makes the reason for the failure of New Year’s resolutions pretty clear.

Whether you want to make some personal changes or you want to enhance your organization’s outcomes, systems, and culture, you should make an intentional assessment of the current state.  This week’s article, “Take an ‘End of Year’ Inventory” offers some relevant thoughts.

Dennis Hooper

After seven consecutive weeks, you may be overloaded with reference to the book Changing for Good.  I know I'm ready to move on to explore some of the additional topics that have offered themselves to me over the past couple of weeks.

The awareness I gained with this study has helped me understand both the sales process in attracting clients and the transformation process my clients experience.

This final article, “Reaching Your Desired Outcome--A New, Healthier Lifestyle,” serves both as a summary of the six stages of change and a description of the sixth stage.

Dennis Hooper

If you've been tracking with each of the stages of change I've addressed in recent weeks, you may have felt last week that "We've finally arrived!"

Ah, but there's more beyond the "action" stage.  Personal improvement is not an event, it's a process.  And the process continues even beyond your initial successes at more effective behavior.

No one ever said that "improvement" is easy.  Rewarding?  Yes.  Easy?  Hardly!  When you least expect it, your old self jumps out in front of your conscious awareness and reacts, sometimes in ways that embarrass your newly polished persona.

You might have a tendency to castigate yourself if you didn't realize that occasional slips and lapses are a normal part of the process of change.  Be patient yet persistent.  Read about the "maintenance" stage of change in "Preserving Your Improvement for the Long Term."

Dennis