What if you were given a choice: Change or Die.

For this exercise, imagine it's not just a rhetorical question, or some blown-up hyperbole from your boss or a motivational speaker or typical corporate dramatics.  It's about real life and death... your life or death.  What if a well-informed, trusted authority said you had to make difficult and lifelong changes in the way you think and behave? If you didn't, your time would end soon -- a lot sooner than it had to. Could you change when change really mattered? When it mattered most?

"Yes" you say?

Try again.

Yes?

You're probably deluding yourself.

You wouldn't change.

Don't believe it? You want odds?

Here are the odds, the scientifically studied odds: nine to one. That's nine to one against you. How do you like those odds?

I was reminded of this recently when listening to a talk by a motivational speaker.  After the talk I did a little research online and found this article.  Following are some highlights from the article interspersed with some of my comments.  (All bolding is mine.) 

We may know what needs to change, but we're incapable of changing. 

One area that demonstrates this graphically is heathcare. Drs have known for years what needs to change, but the healthcare crisis demonstrates we are unwilling or unable to change. 

Dr. Raphael "Ray" Levey, founder of the Global Medical Forum, an annual summit meeting of leaders from every constituency in the health system, told an audience not long ago, "A relatively small percentage of the population consumes the vast majority of the health-care budget for diseases that are very well known and by and large behavioral." That is, they're sick because of how they choose to live their lives, not because of environmental or genetic factors beyond their control. Continued Levey: "Even as far back as when I was in medical school" -- he enrolled at Harvard in 1955 -- "many articles demonstrated that 80% of the health-care budget was consumed by five behavioral issues." Levey didn't bother to name them, but you don't need to be an MD to guess what he was talking about: too much smoking, drinking, eating, and stress, and not enough exercise.

Then the knockout blow was delivered by Dr. Edward Miller, the dean of the medical school and CEO of the hospital at Johns Hopkins University. He turned the discussion to patients whose heart disease is so severe that they undergo bypass surgery, a traumatic and expensive procedure that can cost more than $100,000 if complications arise. About 600,000 people have bypasses every year in the United States, and 1.3 million heart patients have angioplasties -- all at a total cost of around $30 billion. The procedures temporarily relieve chest pains but rarely prevent heart attacks or prolong lives. Around half of the time, the bypass grafts clog up in a few years; the angioplasties, in a few months. The causes of this so-called restenosis are complex. It's sometimes a reaction to the trauma of the surgery itself. But many patients could avoid the return of pain and the need to repeat the surgery -- not to mention arrest the course of their disease before it kills them -- by switching to healthier lifestyles. Yet very few do. "If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle," Miller said. "And that's been studied over and over and over again. And so we're missing some link in there. Even though they know they have a very bad disease and they know they should change their lifestyle, for whatever reason, they can't."

What's true in the healthcare industry is true elsewhere as well.  Just look at how many companies have gone into bankruptcy because they wouldn't or couldn't change.

We're seeing that in the Real Estate and Lending industries as well.  Very few companies had their head so far in the sand that they didn't see this storm on the horizon - years ago.  Yet, few companies were willing and/or able to change to weather, much less prosper, in the storm.

So, what's the solution?  How do we avoid dying?  How can we join the 10% who are willing/able to change?  Is that possible?

Looking back to the healthcare industry, there is one person who has hit upon a plan that seems to be working: Dr. Dean Ornish, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and founder of the Preventative Medicine Research Institute, in Sausalito, California.  Ornish, like a few others, realizes the importance of going beyond the facts. "Providing health information is important but not always sufficient," he says. "We also need to bring in the psychological, emotional, and spiritual dimensions that are so often ignored." Ornish published studies in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals, showing that his holistic program, focused around a vegetarian diet with less than 10% of the calories from fat, can actually reverse heart disease without surgery or drugs. Still, the medical establishment remained skeptical that people could sustain the lifestyle changes. In 1993, Ornish persuaded Mutual of Omaha to pay for a trial. Researchers took 333 patients with severely clogged arteries. They helped them quit smoking and go on Ornish's diet. The patients attended twice-weekly group support sessions led by a psychologist and took instruction in meditation, relaxation, yoga, and aerobic exercise. The program lasted for only a year. But after three years, the study found, 77% of the patients had stuck with their lifestyle changes -- and safely avoided the bypass or angioplasty surgeries that they were eligible for under their insurance coverage. And Mutual of Omaha saved around $30,000 per patient.

Why does the Ornish program succeed while the conventional approach has failed? For starters, Ornish recasts the reasons for change. Doctors had been trying to motivate patients mainly with the fear of death, he says, and that simply wasn't working. For a few weeks after a heart attack, patients were 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 ways.

The patients lived the way they did as a day-to-day strategy for coping with their emotional troubles. "Telling people who are lonely and depressed that they're going to live longer if they quit smoking or change their diet and lifestyle is not that motivating," Ornish says. "Who wants to live longer when you're in chronic emotional pain?"

So instead of trying to motivate them with the "fear of dying," Ornish reframes the issue. He inspires a new vision of the "joy of living" -- convincing them they can feel better, not just live longer. That means enjoying the things that make daily life pleasurable, like making love or even taking long walks without the pain caused by their disease. "Joy is a more powerful motivator than fear," he says.

 So, bringing this back to Real Estate and Lending, how can we, as Professionals change and help others change, when the alternative is lack of business, lack of income, and possibly bankruptcy for us, and continued renting, or losing their current home due to foreclosure, or possibly even bankruptcy for others?

I think the key is to recast the question.  Instead of focusing on what might happen negatively, we need to focus on what the ultimate positive goals are, and clarify (and mentally rehearse) those goals.  Sounds simplistic, and possibly even juvenile to "dream", but why is that any more simplistic and juvenile than mentally rehearsing everything that might go wrong?  Neither has happened, except in our minds.

Just like a musician doesn't practice playing wrong notes, so we shouldn't mentally practice failing.

Figure out what the end is that you (or your clients) have in mind.  Then begin with the end in mind, and keep the end in mind every step of the way.

I find it much easier to help others discover their real goals and realize them than to dig down inside myself to discover my own drives.  That's where a coach/mentor can be particularly helpful.