The Five Stages of Change and Its Application for Singers and Creatives
When people come to me for coaching, there’s something they want to achieve: to record that album, book that gig, write that song, shift to that style that feels more authentic to them.
In order to reach that goal, they have to change. They have to change the ways they spend their time, manage their energy, talk to themselves, deal with failure, interact with people, and more.
How do we move from our dreams to these actual life changes that help those dreams become reality?
A Model for Change
I recently learned about The Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change. It was originally developed by Prochaska and DiClemente in the late 1970s and has become one of the most widely used tools in implementing behavior change in many fields.
So much about the model feels like common sense, and yet, the more I read about it, the more profound it is. It holds many insights for creatives.
Part of the Transtheoretical Model is The Five Stages of Change. That’s where we’ll focus for today.
The Five Stages of Change
The Five Stages of Change are:
- Pre-Contemplation
- Contemplation
- Planning
- Action
- Maintenance
Pre-Contemplation
In Pre-Contemplation, you’re generally not aware that you could change, want to change, need to change. It’s just not in your orbit.
Even if you are aware somewhere way in the back of your mind that change could maybe happen, you’re likely overestimating the cons and underestimating the pros.
Mindfulness about the behavior that could change is generally very low in this stage, including the ways it’s affecting you and your life.
Contemplation
In Contemplation, you’re now aware that you’d like to change. You can see yourself taking action somewhere within the next six months or so.
Pros and cons of the change are likely to feel about the same level in your mind right now, which can lead to ambivalence that slows moving to the next stage. You might even move back to Pre-Contemplation if you decide the change isn’t actually beneficial.
In Contemplation, you’re learning about who you could be as a result of the change, and you’re purposefully observing and learning from people who’ve already made the change.
Sometimes people come to me for coaching during this stage. They know they want to experience some kind of change, but they need help visualizing what it can look like. My job is to help the artist continue to build an accurate picture of what they want and who they could be.
Planning
In the Planning Stage, you’re ready to start taking action in the next month or so. You start making concrete plans. You probably start telling some trusted people that you’re getting ready to take action and would like their support.
The thing about planning is that it has to have concrete details. Saying “I’m going to write songs” isn’t a plan.
A plan has to have a who, what, when, where, and how. (Thanks to author Dana Morningstar for this tip!)
An actual plan: “I will spend Mondays and Wednesdays from 7–9 on songwriting. I will write at least one section (a verse, a chorus, or a bridge) during each session. I will do this for 6 months in order to reach my goal of having 10 songs drafted. I will write in my music space with a notebook, my piano, and LogicPro.”
The Planning stage is where people start to see what it will actually take to change. As the picture gets clearer, some folks get scared they’ll fail. Some even go back to contemplation and hang out there, struggling to let the pros of the change outweigh the cons.
My job in this stage is to help clients get as specific as possible in their plans, to normalize the fears of failure that will inevitably pop up, to help them create room in their lives for the changes, and to remind them of the version of themselves they envisioned that made them want to make the change in the first place. It’s also my job to help them move on to the next stage and not get stuck in planning forever.
My fiercely independent clients sometimes believe they will no longer need support once someone has helped them visualize and create a plan. They will simply move on to the Action stage, complete the plan, and change will be complete. This is never the case.
Action
In Action, you’re actually doing the thing you planned.
This is, by far, the hardest stage.
Action is where Planning meets Reality. Sometimes reality tells us the first plan wasn’t actually viable, and that we have to try again. None of this means you were bad at planning (although sometimes that happens, too). This also doesn’t mean you’re a failure. This is the reality of taking action. No amount of planning can prevent the process of adjusting to reality.
If you want to experience lasting change that will get you to your creative dreams, the most important thing when a plan fails is to make a new plan and then do it.
Maybe you learn that Mondays from 7–9 are actually a horrible time to write because you’re completely drained from the class you teach right before that. So you change the day or the time. Or you give yourself an hour break and only write for one hour after that class and then put another writing hour on a different day.
Maybe you try every day and hour of the week and no matter what day and time it’s on you feel drained and you think maybe that drained feeling is actually your system going into freeze mode because you’re scared about writing. You set a time to process those feelings with someone and realize that the idea of writing in a group feels less scary, so you write down the names of two potential writing partners and a songwriting group, contact them, and make plans to meet. You adjust your songwriting times to accommodate the cowriters and group.
The important thing is that if you want to do the thing, you have to keep trying plans until you find what works.
My job in the Action stage is to help people continue taking action, to compassionately examine what happened when they couldn’t follow through with a plan, create a new plan, and try again. I help them believe they are capable of handling it and help them create coping strategies when things get tough. I provide emotional support when all of those little gremlins pop up that tell us we’re supposed to give up and that it’s not worth it.
In my experience, the Action stage is a crucial stage for having support from trusted friends and family, professionals, and support groups. It’s part of the reason I created my Artist Support Group. I’m pretty darn good at being supportive, but this stuff’s hard, and knowing multiple people have our back on a regular basis makes a big difference.
Maintenance
When you maintain an action for at least 6 months, you are in the maintenance stage, and you have changed.
Said another way, if you haven’t maintained a change for at least 6 months, you haven’t actually changed.
Now, I want to say that sometimes people only want to do something for 6 months. That’s totally cool.
It’s also not the same thing as changing.
Most of the people I work with want to change. They want something to be different about their life. And that means maintaining something for longer than 6 months.
Let’s also be clear about the fact that you don’t have to maintain the exact same plan for 6 months to have experienced change.
For instance, if you write songs every Monday and Wednesday from 7–9 for 6 months, but then you start spending that time on planning a crowdfunding campaign instead, we can confidently say that you have maintained the change of giving your art more time in your life.
My job in this stage is to help clients be aware of the things that can pull them out of maintenance and create contingency plans that decrease the likelihood they’ll get derailed. I also provide support for managing the continuing surprises that life tosses in.
Stage Hopping
Chances are very high that you’ll hop around in these stages multiple times before you get to the Maintenance stage on a particular change. It’s often linear, but not always.
Multiple Threads
Also, for each change you want to make in your life toward your creative goals, you’ll go through the stages as a new thread.
For instance, maybe you reached the maintenance stage of setting aside regular time for songwriting, but in the process of doing that, you realized LogicPro was too hard to use, so you went with a different tool. But you knew you eventually wanted to learn how to use LogicPro better (Contemplation Stage), and want to make a plan to spend time learning Logic. This is a new (albeit related) thread of change.
We can only handle so much change at once, which is why people in many different fields encourage us to limit the things we’re changing. We need time, planning, and action experimentation to get to the maintenance stage.
When You Leave the Maintenance Stage
It’s certainly possible to leave the Maintenance stage and go back to a different stage for a while.
Sometimes leaving the maintenance stage is purposeful. Someone may choose to set aside art time to focus on their new baby for a couple of years. Someone may choose to set aside their music practice in order to focus on a new art form.
Sometimes leaving the maintenance stage is a side effect of new circumstances, but not conscious or purposeful. When this happens, we can take the time to examine the change and decide if it’s best to (1) set aside our practice for a while to accommodate the new circumstances or (2) go back to the Planning and Action Stages and find a way to make the change work in our new circumstances.
Sometimes leaving the maintenance stage is a side effect of our system not having a suitable replacement for whatever we had to give up to take on the new change. It can’t take the restriction anymore. This is a great opportunity to examine what we truly need in our lives and how to find a sustainable balance of actions and choices.
Change Takes Work
No matter how you slice it, change takes work. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be joyful. There is so much pleasure in bringing our creative dreams into reality. It takes perseverance and self-compassion and support from your people.
What change do you want to make? How can I help?
