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By LAUREN NEWKIRK MAYNARD

Published: June 24, 2010

We’ve all heard that famous quote by Gandhi: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

People came to last Thursday’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP) workshop, “Coping with Change and Uncertainty,” for a variety of reasons, but perhaps reflecting on their own behaviors wasn’t the first to come to mind. “My workload,” said one employee. “Needing to learn new things on the job,” said another. Many hands rose when new retirement incentives, furloughs, budget cuts, departmental transitions and office reorganizations were mentioned.

“Coping with Change” was part of the EAP’s ongoing series of seminars and one-hour workshops designed to help faculty and staff handle life at home and at the office.

EAP counselor Christopher Sciuta and consultant Wendy Pegan, a personal relationship coach and founder of Creative Relationship Center in Amherst, started the session by asking attendees to complete a classic test called the nine-dot problem—a topographical puzzle.  Without lifting their pencils, they had to connect nine dots on a piece of paper using only four straight lines. As minutes passed, brows furrowed and erasers scribbled out first and second tries.

It turns out that puzzle can only be solved by moving the pencil beyond the borders created by the nine dots. You literally have to think outside of the box and stretch your creative-thinking skills. (There are several similar solutions to the nine-dot problem using different numbers of straight lines.)

“When change happens in our lives, we might not be thinking of solutions that aren’t immediately obvious,” says Siuta. “This is how humans work…we tend to want to do things the same way over and over.”

Pegan agreed. “We are creatures of habit, but change is a constant,” she said, citing the example of how gym memberships peak twice a year—in January and September—when people are spurred by two major annual changes:  the New Year, with its resolutions and post-holiday regrets, and when the school year’s more rigid scheduling replaces the lazy days of summer.

Siuta and Pegan introduced several concepts, including the “stages of change” model, a continuous cycle of contemplating action, preparing for that action, taking action and making a change, and then maintaining it or letting it relapse. “Like quitting the gym by February, we often give up before we learn how to fully maintain that new action,” said Pegan.

Participants were asked to list situations in their lives that they can control, and those they cannot (or didn’t initially think they could). Reasons why people don’t change include attitudes, unwillingness to leave comfort zones, ingrained habits and upbringings, and resulting belief systems.

Another test Pegan gives her Creative Relationship Center clients is a beliefs inventory, in which participants agree or disagree with groups of such targeted statements as “it is important that others approve of me,” or “immorality should be strongly punished,” or “people never change.” By assigning disagreements with a zero and agreements with a 1, Pegan determines what the person’s belief systems are—whether that is “I must be competent at everything I do” or “External events cause most of my misery.”

Only when we identify our belief systems, Pegan says, can we begin to change them. And we can’t rely on others to do that for us. We must begin to look at situations that may seem unpleasant or anxiety-producing as opportunities for positive change, not for placing blame on others or on ourselves. New job responsibilities, a difficult co-worker or relative, or even our feelings of anger and powerlessness about the economy and the environment can define us and spur us to action, rather than trap us in place.

By the end of the hour-long session, participants had discussed ways in which they can cope with change, wherever it might happen, by learning how to adjust their behaviors and attitudes.

At the core of this philosophy are thoughts—the basis for making decisions and acting on them, Siuta explained.  Thoughts drive our behaviors and lead us to take action along the stages-of-change cycle. He added that by changing the types of initial thoughts we have—from negative to positive, from feeling disempowered to telling ourselves we do have power over our lives and decisions—we can learn to model the change or behavior we wish to see in others. It begins with Gandhi’s principle of looking in the mirror.

“Start with yourself,” Pegan concluded. “You’ll find results follow from there.”

Upcoming EAP workshop topics this year include meditation techniques (July 1 and 13); retirement planning (July 15); EAP tools for supervisors (Sept. 23 and Nov. 17); and a monthly meeting for working moms every second Thursday in the Student Union. Click here to view the complete schedule and register online.

EAP workshops are open to all UB employees; most are free of charge.