The Steps of Healing and Change
There are real, practical, and helpful steps of healing and change.
Whether you’re hoping for a change in weight before summer or a way out of burnout or a different relationship dynamic with a spouse or friend, there are clear steps of healing that will bring sustainable changes.
During some recent searching for my own health and weight goals, I was reading an article about medical and natural ways to suppress all the hunger, craving, food noise that seems to greatly impact my evening snack choices. The voice clearly asks for ice cream while food noise and internal cravings for chocolate and peanut butter intensifies as the evening progresses.
The article was talking about new medications and even some of the more natural suppression supplements and how, if the person doesn’t make lifestyle and behavioral changes along WITH the medications or supplements, the food noise will return as soon as the suppression stops.
Basically, if you don’t make real changes to impact real life, you’ll find yourself right back where you started.
I’m finding the same to be true about boundaries, relationship dynamics, getting out of burnout, being resilient, making big changes, or building habits of any kind.
There has to be internal work happening in the deep places of your heart for the changes to become part of your internal world.
How: The steps of healing and change
1} Let the story spill out in a safe space like counseling or coaching. Process, grieve, and say all the things.
2} Name what you see in your story. Ask for help in your story. Invite Jesus into what you’re discovering. Ask for wisdom. Learn, read, watch, and listen to resources about what you’re naming and seeing. Then, again, process, grieve, and say all the things.
3} Believe what you see. Trust and do not fear.
Then, the real work begins.
4} Look at the data with full commitment to honesty about yourself, your friends, your family, your work, your life.
5} Analyze and bravely look at how you have contributed to, enabled or over-functioned in what you see and where you are.
6} Learn new skills and take every opportunity. Make room for a miracle. Get everything out of the way and let God work through you.
7} Practice these skills, steps and new ways of being, doing, and interacting.
8} Examine what happens during your practice. What happens? What happens in you, in those around you? Gauge reactions and responses and outcomes. Examine the new data.
9} Invite trusted, healthy people into your story.
10} Plan next steps for healing, change, and growth. Build up in strength, awareness, health, and hope.
You can follow this process for stressful work situations, health challenges, destructive relationships, unhealthy friendships, toxic family dynamics, needed personal growth, unhealed pain, confusing experiences, and overall burnout from it all.
These steps of healing and change are vital.
It’s quiet, holy, precious work. It’s a process that begins the work of processing and practicing and implementing real healing and change.
It means doing the next beautiful thing and taking all the time you need with Jesus.
This work of healing and change will take time but every moment is worth the effort.
Are you ready to take steps of healing and change?