Conquering the Resistance to Change

Conquering the Resistance to Change

By Lori Bestler

Today, individuals and organizations realize that when they are constantly changing for the better, they are the successful survivors.

As a motivational speaker, Lori Bestler presents inspiring messages to attendees, encouraging employees to step into their “Greatness” and unleash their full potential.  She says, “To grow means you have to change.  If nothing changes, nothing grows.  Many people fear change, it’s uncomfortable.  Yet there is no comfort in the growth zone.  It’s that simple.  If you want to grow, get comfortable being uncomfortable…until it’s becomes easy.

So how do you conquer the resistance to change to embrace change? 

Even though you may be continuously involved in improvement programs that teach how to increase profits through sales, develop leaders, and improve external relationships, you still may face opposition and conflict within your personal life and corporate culture. These new skills and areas of development to improve an individual and organization are not enough. 

The brain and subconscious mind, often ignored in the workplace, exists and must be nurtured, recognized, and brought though a process of understanding how to affect change on this level, to reach the success you target. Without it, people tend to be overwhelmed, running in too many different directions, fearful, doubtful, and avoid doing anything that may make them look like a failure. 

Subconsciously we are doing one of two things; avoiding pain, or seeking pleasure. 

Motivation is one of the drivers and a reason for moving, to seek pleasure, and take action. When you want or desire to have or achieve something that energizes you, excites you, and connects you to what makes you feel alive and want to “do” something – you are motivated. Motivation; a meaningful and exciting goal, puts a person in motion. 

Wait! Can motivation also be driven by fear? When you feel threatened, are you motivated to respond in a particular way? Can you be forced to change because you are motivated by fear or possible pain? 

Illness can motivate you to avoid pain and eat better, exercise, stop smoking if you value good health. 

The threat of divorce can motivate you to avoid pain and pay more attention to your spouse or change a bad habit that is destroying your relationship. 

Being confronted by your boss who tells you that if you don’t work harder you will loose your job, can motivate you to avoid pain and come in to work early, work through breaks, or stay late, if you value the income your earning or fear not being able to get a better job. 

A competitive and educated society, a promise for living the American Dream can motivate you to seek pleasure and go to college, get a degree to earn more.  It can also cause you to avoid pain, fearing you will not get promoted or make enough money with out it.  

Bottom line, finding your motivation is one way you can change and grow.

Motivation 

Motivation is an emotion driven by negative energy or positive energy. Whether you’re motivated by something that energizes you or something you fear, it is motivation that will activate the emotional energy necessary to get you moving toward a specific outcome. Motivation driven by fear gives the object of your fear, power. What you fear is always dominating your thoughts. Pleasure is seldom found where fear dominates. Fear feeds doubt and low self-esteem. Even being motivated to do nothing, is doing something.   

External incentives, financial rewards, are motivators too. However they often are short lived. When you’re always seeking praise or a raise, you can risk loosing your happiness, peace of mind, and being content with just being you. 

So what do you do to change in the most positive way? 

You are either changing by force or by choice. Only when you’re changing by choice will you grow your knowledge, realize your capabilities, and live energized, fulfilled, and love life. Changing by choice puts you in the driver’s seat of creating a life that aligns with your dreams.   

How to embrace change and grow

Tap into positive energy. When motivation is fueled by positive energy, you are connected to a desirable outcome, a personal passion to do or achieve something that excites and energizes you. You take action because what you choose to do really matters to you and you don’t care if it matters to anyone else, you still do it.  

The reason so many companies, groups, and associations hire motivational speakers is because they have a way of getting employees engaged and excited about learning, working hard, and getting involved to grow the business.  Here is a great story to be motivated by. 

Amazing Change: Author Unknown 

In the early 1980s the managers at General Motors and the workers on its assembly lines viewed one another with hostility and fear. The situation at the factory in Fremont, California, had the worst atmosphere. You could tell frustration and negativity motivated negative actions by the number of beer bottles littering the parking lot. 

On any given day, more than a thousand of the five thousand workers wouldn’t bother showing up for work. The ones who did show up were distrustful and bitter. 

Employees rebelled when their bosses forced them to speed up the production line. Employees thought GM was trying to make them appear incompetent by forcing them to work faster. When they could not keep up, GM would eliminate jobs and replace them with robots. They were partly right: GM’s top executives in Detroit blamed the company’s problems on its unruly employees, and they were investing a staggering amount of money on automation–$45 billion–so they could cut back on human labor. 

Tension spread throughout the Fremont plant. Workers and managers battled incessantly. The workers fought with one another so fiercely that the national headquarters of the United Auto Workers had to seize control of the local branch. GM’s vice president for labor relations called the plant’s workforce “unmanageable.” A large percentage of the workers had been there for twenty to twenty- five years, and they were considered impossibly “resistant” to change. 

Considering the situation hopeless, GM closed down the factory and laid off five thousand workers. Then something really strange happened, almost unthinkable. Toyota offered to revive the plant and produce a GM car there–a Chevrolet. The two companies created a partnership named New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. Toyota wanted to recruit fresh new hands, but the UAW insisted otherwise. 

Toyota reluctantly took back the ornery old hands. The workers returned with the same distrust for their new bosses as they had for the previous ones. The workers’, now fearing less pay, seemed vindicated when Toyota said it would need only half as many workers as GM to build the same number of cars. When Toyota’s management talked about creating a new sense of mutual trust and respect in Fremont, the employees said the idea was a lie. 

Regardless of the employees’ bad attitude, that’s exactly what happened. Three months after the assembly line started up again, the company was rolling out cars with hardly any defects. At that same time many GM factories struggled to keep their average down to forty defects per car. A Wall Street Journal correspondent wrote that New United Motor Mfg. Inc. was producing “some of the best cars that GM had ever sold… with half as many workers”. The cost of making the cars fell dramatically. 

Absenteeism at the Fremont factory went from over 20 percent down to 2 percent, even though Toyota banned practices such as smoking and listening to the radio. 

Back at GM’s headquarters in Detroit, top executives assumed that Toyota achieved its spectacular results through cutting- edge technology. Detroit sent envoys to Fremont to see what was happening. Their investigation revealed that there was no secretive technology to see. The company’s machinery was three decades out of date: It was 1950s technology! 

What did Toyota’s executives know that enabled them to win over thousands of workers who had been considered “unmanageable”? 

What did Toyota’s executives know that enabled them to win over thousands of workers who had been considered “unmanageable”?  Toyota’s secret wasn’t their technology, it was their psychology. Toyota’s shocking improvements were the result of encouraging the once hostile American workers to constantly come up with ideas for improving quality and cutting costs. Now they talked unceasingly about the sense of “family” they felt within the company. 

To be long lasting, motivation MUST come from inside you, from the heart.  The will to do something, to change something, must be perceived as worthwhile.  People must feel valued, and be empowered to contribute ideas and solutions for improvement viewed as a viable pathway to success.  

The level of excitement, hope, and self worth must override the energy drain game that comes with fear, doubt, and discouragement.  When you are connected to a passionate, purposeful goal, when there exists opportunity to grow, contribute, and impact positive change, your energy levels are enormous.  The energy you gain by feeling valued activates the motivation to put your efforts in motion. 

Your passionate purposeful goal must foster positive emotions that outweigh the negative emotions that are activated when you imagine the effort it will take, fear of failure, and challenges you think you may encounter along the way.  What ever emotion is strongest in your perceptions; it will dominate and motivate your actions. 

The positive will to do what will impact lasting success and fulfillment comes from doing what you love.  When you do what you love, love who you are, and feel you have something worthwhile to offer others, you will be motivated to take care of yourself, grow, and change with others. 

If you’re looking for a training program for the employees in your organization to learn change management techniques for experiencing growth in the workplace, you might want to consider this workshop. Or read more about other programs here; 

Outrageous Success Workshop for Sales Professionals

GIVING YOU CONTROL OF YOUR MIND TO EXCEL!

Most sales professionals do not realize how much there thinking patterns are the root cause of their problems and steal their power.

• Procrastination
• Paper Piles
• Stress/Anxiety
• Negative Self-Talk; Self-doubt, Fears, Apprehension

Have you ever wondered why some people achieve so little and others so much in life? Dr. Alan Zimmerman spent years researching this question. He discovered that achievement and success had NOTHING to do with a person’s age, gender, IQ, education, family background, “breaks in life,” or racial/ethnic identity. Absolutely NOTHING!! The winners, the champions, the peak performers had PERSONAL POWER.

Hire Lori to speak to your group and teach powerful tools and techniques for achieving OUTRAGEOUS SUCCESS!

“OUTRAGEOUS SUCCESS” explains how to master your mind’s programming so that attendees can and will create the intentional success they want and are working toward. Lori’s presentations are engaging, enlightening and interactive while her experiential lessons empower attendees to live their life by choice and not chance.

For More Information
Call Lori at 651-260-4540

About Lori

This article was written by Mind Mastery Expert and Personal Development Guru Lori Bestler. She is a Strategic Mind Coach, Award Winning Motivational Speaker, and founder and owner of the MindScapes Unlimited Mind Coaching Center.

Lori Bestler has helped to quickly transform thousands of individual’s lives through her Strategic Mind System of Success and Rapid Results Coaching Program, Rapid Results Mind Power Audio Series and speaking engagements. She specializes in working with high level entrepreneurs and independent business professionals with busy minds. Most Lori’s clients want to take control of their life, possibly feeling overwhelmed, unfocused and stressed out. She helps clients overcome barriers in thought patterns, limiting beliefs and behavior resulting in improving their business, relationships, health and state of wellbeing.  Ms. Bestler runs a private coaching and hypnotherapy practice in Lino Lakes MN, assisting clients in the Minneapolis, St. Paul and surrounding Twin Cities Metropolitan Areas, as well as all over the U.S.

For a no cost consultation contact Lori at www.mindscapesunlimited.com .  And please join our email list for a FREE “Be Revived and Energized 10 minute MP3 download and Monthly Newsletter.

© MindScapes UnLimited www.mindscapesunlimited.com 651-260-4540