All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy,…..
William Shakespeare (full poem – http://poemhunter.com/poem/all-the-world-s-a-stage)
That being said, there are great concepts about the stages of change:
Prochaska’s Transtheoretical Model (TTM) acknowledges that lasting change generally proceeds through six key stages: from Precontemplation, to Contemplation, then to Preparationand Action. But that’s only the beginning, and we can easily coast right back into preparation or contemplation if we lose our nerve, focus or steam. For our behavior change to prove sustainable, it must enter a Maintenance phase (generally, six months or more of consistent action) until it finally becomes ingrained as a stable habit. This final, ongoing phase is known as Termination, which implies that the change is now a permanent part of our lifestyle.
Most “just do it” programs fail to embrace the reality of this complex and fluid progression. Instead, they encourage people to jump straight into action, leapfrogging over all those messy preparatory steps.
Unfortunately, those might be precisely the steps that give our change efforts the greatest chances of success. And so it happens that a great many of us who jump directly into action wind up falling right back out of it — again and again.
Once you take stock of Prochaska’s model, all of this seems self-evident. And it seems curious that these insights became part of the modern psychological canon only relatively recently.
from Changing for Good by James Prochaska
Stage #1
Pre-Contemplation
Unaware of problems associated with behavior. Certain that the positives of the behavior out- weigh the negative. Not interested in change. Unwilling to change. No intention to change.
Unaware
Resistant
