Commercials on tv tell you all the time that you can change yourself. In thirty seconds, the commercial actors can get smarter, thinner, prettier, richer. But this fantasy world only sets us up for a fall.
We hear about the possibilities for wonderful changes people can make in their lives, and we want to duplicate those results. When we try and are not quickly rewarded, we actually wind up feeling worse than we did before we started.
The problem is, of course, that change is possible, but it does not come immediately. Nobody wants to sell us on a program for change that will take years because of course no one would buy it. But it does take years to accomplish the most important changes.
When you entered the first grade, you didn’t expect to learn a second language, algebra, and the history of the War of 1812 all in the first week. You began an education that took more than a decade and provided you with incredible positive change.
Positive change in your life will not be finished today, but it can start today.
Charlie’s job is about change. He is brought in to smooth the transition when one company acquires another. It has given him a special perspective on the subject of change.
“Companies have cultures—ways of doing things, ways of life for the employees. These cultures aren’t easy to change. Sometimes these cultures hold companies back from doing what they are capable of, and sometimes they make it impossible for two separate businesses to merge and exist together.”
What Charlie does is study the cultures of the companies with an eye toward protecting the future. “When you have a culture that is not serving the long-term needs of the company, it needs to be changed—but changed carefully. If you change things too drastically, or change the culture in a negative, threatening way, then there will be high turnover, and you won’t have changed the culture as much as destroyed it.
“Healthy change is a long-term process, whether for a company or the people in it,” Charlie says.
The decision to make a change offers wonderful feelings of control and optimism, but those are short-lived if the change is not accomplished. Repeated efforts at self-change, characterized by an expectation of an unrealistically high payoff in an unrealistically short time, actually reduce satisfaction with our lives by 40 percent.
Polivy and Herman 2000