Am I Ready For Change?

At the recent One Step, One Breath Event, one of speakers talked about changes.  Are you ready for change?  She kept asking?  And my immediate response was "Yes, of course I am."  Yet she asked us to think about it further.  Am I REALLY ready for change or do I just like the idea of it? 

For example, she said that she wanted to quit smoking.  She would stop and everything would be good.  But...she'd go out with friends on Friday and they were smoking so she would smoke with them.  But she had quit.  But she didn't really want the change, she just liked the idea of it.  Once she was willing to stop smoking all the time, she was really ready for the change.

I thought about this while at the OBOS event, but then kind of put it out of my mind. 

Then I attended a training for work.  A training on Motivational Interviewing.  Likely most people have't heard of motivational interviewing or MI.  It's used in several areas of life as a tool to help ellicit changes from people who are resistive to change.  It's based on strategies that allow the person to come to the conclusion that change is necessary and how they can accomplish it.

The model of change looks like this:

When the trainer put this model on the screen I was once again hit with the question "Am i ready for change?"  It's interesting to me that when I'm struggling with something, I'm often times 'shown' the path in all areas of my life.  This is another example of this.  Never would I have thought that the change question would be repeated to me in my work life also.

So where am I in this model?  I'd say preparation <---> action.  I wander between these two on a regular basis.  I also think that it's interesting to note that relapse is built into the model.  Everyone relapses, falls back and needs to continue working on progress.  This was another item that the speakers all talked about at the OSOB event.  You relapse, your pick yourself up and start back on your path.

So where are you in this model?