Awareness is the start of change. You’ve heard that before. I agree that it is the start, however it take more than awareness to successfully and sustainably change.

Neuroscience research done in 1983, demonstrated that a decision regarding what action to take was made 3/10th of a second before any conscious awareness and that you only have 2/10th of a second after that to be aware of the decision and to choose to continue with it or change it and make a new one.  That works great when you are single focused and aware, however often there is too much going on around us and in our heads to stay aware of everything. So our natural habits take over and we react and then wonder why we did the same thing again when we ‘know’ better.

At a recent conference, I presented about going beyond awareness to create sustainable results. Let me explain briefly. For an organization to be successful, the ultimate is for each employee to give superior performance with their job. To keep this simple, sustainable results are needed to achieve superior performance. To have sustainable results, the individual needs to have the competencies related to the expected performance. To demonstrate the competencies, the individual must do behaviors that support the competencies. In order to develop the competencies, the individual is often coached or trained to be aware of their natural tendencies and to adapt them to meet the required behaviors. Why adapt? Because developmental focus is often with natural tendencies that are counter-productive to expected behaviors and competencies.

This applies whether we are talking about diversity, emotional intelligence, ethics, leadership, sales or even basic time management.

We can observe, discover, and feedback natural tendencies, yet the standard approach is about focusing on awareness and adapting or overriding the natural behavior. This requires the individual to stay aware in order to use the 2/10th of a second timeframe to catch their habit and redirect the unconscious decision and make a new choice. Works okay when there is limited external influences or low internal stress. The rest of the time… the majority of time… the individual is reacting and totally unaware.

My invitation is to break out of the standard approach and explore alternative proven methods that influence the natural tendency so the coping is not needed or the adapting is easier with less internal resistance. Visit InnerActive Mindset to begin your exploration.