Question
How do I practice schemas about change?
Quick Answer
Write down how you believe personal change works. Not how you think it should work — how you actually operate when you try to change a habit, a belief, or a pattern. Do you assume change happens in a single decision? Gradually through repetition? Only through crisis? Through deliberate practice?.
Now look at the last three changes you attempted. Did the approach you used match the schema you just wrote down? If not, identify the hidden schema that actually drove your behavior — the one you act on, not the one you endorse.
Common pitfall: Holding a single schema about change and applying it to every domain. Believing all change is gradual leads to passivity when decisive action is required. Believing all change is sudden leads to impatience with processes that genuinely require sustained iteration. The failure is not having the wrong theory of change — it is having only one.
This practice connects to Meta-Schemas — building it as a repeatable habit compounds over time.
Learn more in these lessons
- Schemas about change
Your model of how change happens determines how you approach change.
Go beyond the answer
This topic is part of Change the System, Not Just the People — a guided sequence of 20 lessons.
After completing this path you will understand why organizations resist change (it's a systems property, not stubbornness), know how to read and translate the mental models others can't see, have stakeholder mapping and coalition-building skills that make good ideas actually happen, and be able to shift from frustrated critic to effective architect of organizational evolution.
Start the path →