In some sense the process for changing you is simple. You get where you are through the experiences you have in your life. You get to a new place by having new and different experiences in your life.

Our first experience

First let me talk about how you get where you are. You participate in the world and gain what we think of as “knowledge” of how the world works. That is you see things, smell things, taste thinks, touch things and so on. You try to do things that are pleasing to you. Some things you try work and some don’t work. The sensory input that result from your interaction with the world are organized into knowledge. That is, you make sense of the experience and create a “mental model” for what that means to you. You use the mental model to guide future actions that accomplish what you want.

Take this silly example. Through experience you learn that walking with your shoes untied is very awkward. Your Mom informs you that having your shoes tied is very useful. At first she does this for you and you observe how it is done. You notice that having your shoes tied really does work better. Later you get instruction and eventually you tie your shoes yourself. You have both knowledge of the value for tying shoes and knowledge of how to do that for yourself.

On a bit of a side note, some people talk about “the child within” and want to heal or correct that child. I prefer to think that some of my models for how the world works are just older than others. I am not activating my “inner child” when I tie my shoes. I am activating a very old model for how I tie my shoes. There is not some very young person running around in my head telling me to tie my shoes. There is a very old but currently relevant model in my head for why tying shoes is important.

The need for change

Sometimes the old model needs an update, or just stops working in the current world. When that happens we need to think about change. My sense is that we go through change processes throughout our lifetime. Most of the time what we do works. Sometimes, something we did earlier stops working. We have changed or the world has changed and our models need to be updated to match these changes.

Changing old models of how we do things is a two step process. First, we have to recognize that the old model is not working and find a way of deactivating the old model. Then we need to consciously expose our self to new experiences that will build a new model that we think might work. In counseling terms, we find which old model is not working in the exploration phase of the counseling process. The insight phase of counseling tells us exactly how the model works now, where it came from, and what is not working about it. During the action phase of counseling we start to deactivate (or more technically, “deconstruct”) the mental model that isn’t working and build a new one.

With my shoe tying model, I honestly don’t know what happened. I am quite sure that for many years I tied my shoes with a single knot and that was not a problem. Some time ago I noticed that many of my shoes were becoming untied. Huh? I am an adult. I know that shoes need to be tied. Literally, my shoes were becoming untied! What the… ? Eventually I had to seriously think about what to do. Over time I “deconstructed” the model that a single knot in my shoes would work. Through observation and experience I decided that the single knot was no longer viable in the modern world. Actually, I think fewer shoe strings were made of cotton. More were made of synthetic material with a very slick surface. The slick surface doesn’t hold a know as well.

New experience

You get to a new understanding by a having a new experience. You can create the experience your self by being conscious that you are trying to make a change. That is, you observe that you do something in a certain way. You become even more familiar with that through close observation (This is essentially what scientist do). Now, consciously you determine what you want to change. You began to “deconstruct” the old model when you noticed it didn’t work. Now, you begin to replace it by trying to find what does work. The process looks like this:

Self observe
↓
Make a choice
↓
Try that
↓
Check the result

Over time, just like you did in the beginning, you gain experience with new thoughts, feelings, and actions on your part. The new experience is organized into new knowledge. The knowledge becomes a new model of how the world works. Eventually, when the new model works in a satisfactory way, you accept it as the model for how to do things in the world as it is today. It slides into your unconscious were it can be activated automatically.

Back to my shoe strings. Now, I double knot any shoe that has slick shoe strings. They never come untied. For simplicity, I double knot any shoe with strings on it. This may be overkill, but I don’t want to have a step where I stop and think, what kind of shoe strings are these, do they need double or single knots? I just double knot anything with a string on it. Now, I do this automatically. Really simple and it works well for me.

The short version of change is simple. We interact with the world and receive sensory input from it. Our mind is build such that it takes sensory inputs and organizes them into experience. Our experience allows us to make sense of the world and allows us to create mental models for how the world works. We use these mental models every day of our life. Sometimes one of the models needs an update. Then we deactivate the old model and build a new one by consciously creating new experiences for our self by changing the actions that we take. When we repeat these new actions and gain the associated experience, new knowledge is stored in our memory. We are building a new mental model that can be activated automatically when needed. This of course is simple for tying shoes. Sometimes a more experienced or trained person is needed to help us with more complicated changes. These people are called moms, dads, teachers, coaches, mentors, counselors, psychotherapists…