Martha Beck recounts an interesting story about her daughter choosing a college*. When they first spoke about the matter the daughter dismissed the discussion saying the only thing she wanted from a college was a location without bugs.

Martha recognized that her daughter was still in precontemplation on the subject. Precontemplation is the first stage of change when we are asking ourselves if the change is even possible.

In fact we may have even given up on achieving a certain goal because of the risk of failure. When people have abandoned hope they they say things like, “I’ve tried everything, and nothing works.”

A few months later when Martha breached the subject of college again, her daughter had still not given it any thought. Rather then pushing her daughter on the issue, she said “well, you don’t have to make any decisions today.” To which her daughter said “she would think about thinking about it.”

And this was key, because now the daughter is at least considering the change.

During precontemplation we are guarded. Had Martha strong-armed her daughter that day, the pressure would have pushed her daughter away from even considering change.

The increase in stress would have caused her to go into fight or flight, and the emotional portion of the brain would have taken charge to defend her from the stress.

When we are stuck in pre-contemplation we become defensive about the problem. We are not willing to discuss the problem. Instead of seeing the actions of others as concern or caring, we see it as them trying to control us.

When we are stuck in precontemplation we avoid learning about our problems. We may change the channel on TV, or change the subject in conversation. We are unwilling to deeply consider the consequences of our behavior, and we rarely take responsibility for our actions.

At any given time we are all in different stages of change with different issues in our life. But once a person is ready to move on to the contemplation stage we will start to see our interest shift about our behavior.

Most people learned to ride a bike when they were kids. They probably got a bike as a present or learned to ride on a friends bike. When they saw the other kids riding and they had an opportunity to learn they probably jumped right in on the action phase of change.

They probably failed over and over and recycled through the action phase until they were in the maintenance phase. They skipped right past precontemplation, contemplation, and preparation to make that change. And you have probably done this with countless changes in your life.

But, I was not that kid. I didn’t really learn to ride a bike until I was an adult. I had a friend who lived a couple miles away and she rode all the time. I really wanted to learn to ride, but after a few attempts I put the effort on the back burner for over a year until I was ready.

I was in the precontemplation stage for a while. But then I gradually became more curious and willing to ride on the street in front of my house.

When we start to shift from precontemplation to contemplation we are more willing to discuss the issue. We start to ask questions or research the topic, and we start to consider both the immediate and the longer term consequences of our behavior. Such as how our behavior might effect others, like a child or spouse or our parents.

In my many attempts to turn myself into a bike rider, I tried riding on the flattest street and at the least busy time. I tried going to parking lots and getting a feel – which worked for bike riding but not for traffic confidence. Riding with cars terrified me and I wasn’t sure how my friend did it so well.

We live by a large park that is frequented by many bikers so one day we took some beat-up old bikes on my first 2 mile ride.

It was too much too soon, bad bikes plus lots of hills equalled no fun at all. I didn’t touch a bike until a year later when I started walking two and a half miles to work a couple times a week.

I watched people bike and thought how much more fun and easy it would be if I road a bike instead of walking. I borrowed my neighbors bike and one day barely pedaled up the hill to work, feeling a bit like the wicked witch of the west.

Seriously, and I don’t know why. But I was even singing a song from the The Wizard of Oz.

Having a better bike, and an easier route turned out to be a great experience and was just enough change, without too much stress. In fact, it was the appropriate step to change my story. I not only learned to ride confidently around my city, but I biked the islands of Charleston, the streets of Amsterdam, and the coast of Portugal.

*The Four Day Win by Martha Beck.