"Sure, I could change, but what good would that do to me? This would still be a rotten place to work?" 

"Why should I be the one to change? He's making me miserable." 

"It's really not that bad. Other people have it worse." 

These are the sounds of foot-dragging, stone walling, proscrastinating, and just plain resisting change You do it even though you are going to remain stuck in your dead-end job, your unsatisfaying relationship, or some other self-defeating situation. 

Clinging to old, familiar habits even though they are hurting you--refusing a seat in a lifeboat to stay on the deck of a ship you know is sinking--is not a conscious choice. It is a reflex action, an automatic response. Your life as it is may not be terrific, but it is familiar and predictable. If you change any aspect of it, you might lose that sense of safety and security and never find it again. 

Who can blame us for wanting to wait for time to heal all that ails us to reveal the perfect, preferably painless solution to our problems? Unfortunately, while we are waiting around to be miraculously rescued, time marches on, taking countless opportunities and most of life's potential pleasure with it. 

When you resist change, you are like a car struck in neutral gear with it's engine racing. Burning fuel and spinning your wheels, you are caught in a cycle of identifying what you need to do and then talking yourself out of doing it. You get all revved up but do not move an inch in any direction. 

How to change 
First of all, no matter how messy, unsatisfying, or downright depressing your present circumstances are, you do not have to change everything sbout yourself. You have many characteristics, attitudes and attributes that are fine and are working for you just the way they are. 

How do you decide what parts of your life to change and what to keep the same? Try this exercise : 
  Make a list. You will need three piece sheets of paper. On the first sheet, about 2/3 of the way down the page, draw a horizontal line. Fill in the top section with anything you do like about yourself or your life today. Include your strong points, talents, skills and good personality traits; also note the people, activities, and things in your life that you value.  

Fill in the bottom section with situations or interactions you feel handle effectively--those you feel confident about and more often than not, walk away from feeling satisfied with the outcome. 
On another sheet of paper divided the same way, fill the top section with anything you do not like about yourself or your circumstances. Include weaknesses, limitations, sore spots, bad habits; also include people, activities, and things you do not feel good about. Fill the bottom section with situation and interactions that baffle you or make you feel anxious and that you believe you do not handle effectively. 

We all have a natural tendency to see every flaw but remain blind to many of our positive attributes. To avoid this problem, limit the number of items on your first piece of paper (the list of things you like and do well). If you can't add more items to the first list. 

Now go back over both lists, marking each item with an A,B, or C. A is for anything that is very important part of your life today (something you cherish and would fight to keep or something that makes you miserable and you would wish away if you could); B for anything that has an impact on your life, but not as great an impact as the items A and C for anything that is not particularly important to you. 

After you have done that, take your third sheet of paper and draw a vertical line down the middle of it. From the A items on your "like" page, choose 10 things that are of the utmost importance to you. List them in descending order in the left-hand column. Then from the A, B or C items on your "don't like" page, choose five that you would most like to change and five that seems as if they would be the easiest to change. List them in any order in the right-hand column. You now have a framework for deciding what you want to change--and you have a list of positive attributes and abilites which you can draw upon while you change. 

But how do you change? How do you go about reaching goals you set for yourself? You find ut what oppositions, or alternative courses of action are available to you. And then you evaluate those options and consciously choose the path you take to reach each goal. 

Four ways to identify your options 
1. Use your imagination. Learn to brainstorm, to generate a long list of options, including everything from the sublime to the ridiculous. Be playful, even silly. At this stage, don't evaluate or eliminate anything. 

2. Locate your "transferable skills". Finding new ways to use the skills and positive attributes you already have enables you to further increase your options. If you can plan a department budget and organize events at work, you might try doing the same thing at home with your spouse and/or family-curtailing those arguments about money and chores. 

3. Conduct surveillances. Begin paying more attention to the behavior of people you admire, respect, or wish to emulate in some way. If you are timid, watch people who are gregarious. If you are afraid to assert yourself, keep an eye on "take charge" people who routinely do the things you find so difficult. 

4. Ask for advice. It's tough to be objective when your own life or relationships seem to be on the line. But others have had and gotten beyond the same trouble spots that you have stymied. Still others who have skills or knowledge you lack, or who simply operate from a different frame of reference, may suggest options that would never occur to you. 

How to evaluate your options 
Once you've made a list of the options available to you, try the following to find out which course of action is mor likely to work for you: 

For each option, create a tally sheet. Draw a line down the middle of a sheet of paper to make two columns, one for debits and other for credits. In the debit column, list the negative consequences you think you might suffer by pursuing that option. In the credit column, list the positive outcomes you think you might obtain. Think carefully about the circumstances and then mark with an asterisk the realistic items in each column--that is, the things that are actually likely to happen. 

If comparing tally sheets at this point does not cause one option to jump out at you, go back and give a numerical value to each realistic consequence or outcome. Use a one-to-five scale, with five, representing the most important consideration and one the least important. 

Any option with a lot of highly ranked negative consequences probably is not in your best interest. Mediocre rankings in both columns indicate a fairly safe option, but not one for which you can generate much enthusiasm. The clear "winner" is usually the option with a number of highly ranked positive outcomes and few important negative ones. 

Making the decision 
You've identified the options that are in your best interest. Now it is time to actually make a choice and act on it. 

At this point, you will undoubtedly notice your resistance to change re-emerging and your anxiety level rising. Return to your personal inventory, bolstering your confidence by reminding yourself of your strong points. Then experiment. Pick a low-risk situation and do something atypical. Instead of suffering silently, change seats on the train when someone wearing too much cologne sits down next to you. Tell a friend who wants to meet you at noon that you'd prefer to meet at 12:30. Politely put a ranting customer on hold while you regain your composure. 

Act as if you already comfortable with your new approach. Consciously pretend that you are already the person you want to be. If you want to move the career ladder, act as if you already have, dressing the part, offering suggestions, taking the initiative to do more than the bare minimum. If you want to be more self-confident, pretend you already are. 

Change your body language. Force yourself to make eye contact instead of sheepishly staring at your fingernails or the floor. Express opinions and make decisions, beginning with small ones like commenting on a movie you ahve recently seen or picking the restaurant where you and your spouse will eat on Saturday night. 

Take one step at a time. And remember one very important point : No decision you make is etched in stone. 

There is no path you can choose to travel now that you cannot also choose to turn off later in your journey. Although you can expect to hear some anxious internal voice asking, "what if I make the wrong choice?" the fact of the matter is that there are no wrong choices. Or at least, there is no choice that is so wrong that you cannot learn something from it, reconsider your options--and make another choice.