Looking at the year ahead, is there a purpose you’d love to make progress with or a change you’d love to bring about? Would you like this so much that you’d be prepared to try out a simple practice that might help that happen?
The practice is called ‘Do the JATCH’, and it draws on some of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned about change-making in forty years of study and practice in this field. JATCH stands for the Journey Approach to Change, and it involves four discrete stages that act together in a spiral that can be repeated at regular intervals, each time nourishing your sense of engagement in the journey of moving forward with purposes you have your heart in.
- The review stage: You start from where you are, taking a moment to acknowledge where that is and how this is.
- The dream stage: Knowing that the future can develop in a range of different ways,
you identify your preferred version, vision or hope, of what might happen. - The plan stage: You make a choice, and commitment, to play an active part in the process of moving this way. You take on the project of helping your vision happen or become more likely,
and develop a plan for what you can do to support this. - The do stage: As your plan involves identifying specific achievable steps you can take in the next seven days, you go and take one of those steps. And then another, and another.
At periodic intervals you repeat this process, in an ongoing spiral of dream, plan, do, review.
When you take any of these steps, you are doing the JATCH. You’re doing the Journey Approach To CHange.
What I’ve described here is the ‘short form’ of a practice for wellbeing that can be engaged with at a range of levels and over a variety of timescales. For example, you can think about your week ahead, and start by reviewing how things are going, what you’d like to happen, and what steps are needed to move that way. You could also apply this on a macro level that considers our collective future. Somewhere in between is taking a look at your hopes and intentions for the year ahead. We’re at a great time of the year to do that, and to support this process I’m offering a free webinar on Wednesday 4th January 2023 to look in more depth at what helps us bring about desired change and move forward in directions we’d like to go. It is just for an hour, starting at 7.30pm UK time, 11.30am US PT, 2.30pm US ET, 20.30hrs Europe CET (for other timezones, please use the timezone converter at this link). You can find out more and book at this link. If you can’t make the live webinar, anyone booking will be sent a link to the recording afterwards.
I use the term ‘The Journey Approach to Change’ to describe an approach to change-making I’ve been developing for many years. It weaves together positive psychology and systems thinking with insights from addictions recovery and storytelling. The central idea is that when a desired change feels difficult, you take on the project of moving that way, of seeing positive change as a journey involving many smaller steps. In addition to any more specific actions to move your purpose forward, these steps may also include pauses for renewal, reflective processes to seek clarity or deepen motivation, preparing and training yourself in areas you find difficult or not yet able to do, and finding allies for support or company along the way. Applying a growth mindset, the journey approach involves not only making the change, but also supporting and developing your capacity to do this.
Some years ago I developed an eight-week online course in this approach, and I’m delighted to be offering this again, starting on Wednesday 18th January. As well as drawing together a learning community for mutual support and encouragement, the course combines group-based coaching with training in change-making skills to support you in getting clearer about the purposes that call you and make significant progress in following them. If there’s something you’d really like to move forward with in 2023, this course offers a structure and process designed to help. You can find out more about the Journey Approach to Change online course at this link. There are discounts both for early booking and if you’ve done certain other courses with me.
One of the changes people most often want to make is to deepen the satisfaction that comes from nourishing relationships. As a step towards helping people do this, I’m pleased to introduce a new course called ‘Love Your Listening Skills’. Developing our capacity to listen well is an evidence-based approach to improving relationships, and over a series of four webinars starting on Tuesday 21st Feb, we focus on building skills that help us do this.