8 Catalytic Steps To Change

by Dave Miller

Here at Sentergy.us and the H3X Podcast we return to the concept of CFC (Commitment Focus & Consistency) with our own CFC. Let’s take a peak under the hood of how to develop a CFC and how to lead change with your CFC.

The 8 Catalytic Steps to Change

1. Idea

2. Thoughts

3. Feelings

4. Plan

5. Habits

6. Commitment

7. Lifestyle

8. Change

You are most likely a western thinker so instantly this list became a linear path to change. Start with an idea, form some thoughts about the idea, get comfortable with it and then form a plan… off to the races! This is, however, rarely actual experience in change. The truth is, change is a combination of all eight and the steps will come in all kinds of orders. One thing without a doubt will be required, the seminal idea must take root as a lifestyle for change to happen.

1. Idea

Ideas that bring change confront besetting obstacles with a big promise, a clear path, and simple tools. Most ideas are incomplete, they lack the depth and breadth required for the solution to carry the weight of a big promise and they lack the clarity needed to confront obstacles with a clear path and simple tools. The continual heavy lifting in head, heart, and hands mandatory for an idea to become reality usually become the insurmountable obstacle. We must constantly calibrate an idea against clarity, depth and breadth with our head, heart and hands for it to take root as a lifestyle that leads change.

2. Thoughts

Thoughts develop around ideas and lead to ideas. Thoughts bring clarity, depth, and breadth to an idea. Thoughts may be your own or someone else’s. They come through reading, conversations, successes, failures, listening, ruminations, and experiences. More clarity, more depth, more breadth for the idea will become fundamental to how you feel, plan, and behave. Clarity, depth and breadth cause an idea to take root as your core focus. The heavy lifting in your head should not be underestimated. Right thinking is hard work and a worthy core focus should expect nothing less.

3. Feelings

Feelings attach us to ideas. Feelings move ideas from head to heart converting them to identity. Feelings move a core focus from something we think to someone we are. They root a core focus in the heart. Commitment relates way more with feelings than thoughts, which is why a core focus had better be worthy. Once it takes root in the heart the pattern to change is set in motion, whether good or bad. Connect right thinking with right feelings and the power of will becomes the natural path. A person will begin to talk about a core focus as a calling or passion which is very different from a disconnected or abstract idea with which one agrees. Feelings move us past agreement to engagement.

4. Plans

Plans give you a place to start. Plans change potential to motion. Plans provoke experience. The directional nature of plans allows learning through obstacles, success, and failure. Actual experiences create real space for emotional responses to an idea moving us towards the will to change and the will to work towards clarity depth and breadth to our core focus. If the head and heart align on a core focus, but the hands fail to work, one of two things happen: 1. The core focus fades and desired change does not occur, or 2. Inaction births fear, jealousy, or anxiety and change occurs but towards unhealthy emotions and useless distractions.

5. Habits

Habits develop the core activities of the core focus. Habits are the exercise of identity. When our thoughts and feelings take hold of a core focus, and a plan is made, our desire to be the idea will express itself in constant activities. These actions develop into a constant pattern of thinking, feeling, and doing that begins to define not only our core focus but, most importantly, our core identity. Yet, the true impact is not limited to identity alone. Habits consistently connect the core focus with reality through activities that impact progress. Habits therefore, become your core activities. Simply put, you are your habits. As I warn my children I will warn you, no one ever really quits, they just start doing what someone else wants them to do. You determine your habits or your habits determine you, but everyone has habits.

6. Commitment

Commitment is the will to compete until change happens. The powerful combination of core focus, core identity, and core activities is the source of our continual will to compete. The secret sauce to overcome obstacles, hinderances, distractions, competing ideas, and pushback is commitment.

7. Lifestyle

Time, as the unknown, will become a burden or a blessing. Your core focus must take root as a lifestyle for significant change to happen. So think of the 8 steps to change as the catalysts for a core focus to deliver on its big promise with a clear path and simple tools.

- Expect Decades

- Plan in years

- Think in months

- Work in days

- Live in moments

- Celebrate the wins

You must be resolved to endure to breakthrough.

8. Change

There is a besetting obstacle in your life. There are besetting obstacles in our world. Change is the answer. Right change confronts those besetting obstacles with a big promise, a clear path, and simple tools. You must engage your head with a core focus, your heart with a core identity, and your hands with core activities to see change happen. This is how you lead change personally and with others.

These 8 catalytic steps to change are effective precisely because they rewire desire. Ultimately we are driven not primarily by thoughts and actions but by desires. Change driven by rewired desire is durable.

Make sure the object of your worship can deliver on the promise made. The perspective and choice from my corner of the world, Jesus is the only one worthy and able.