Change - It Don't Come Easy

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In the late ’70s, as I began embracing an eco-friendly, vegetarian diet, I was so naïve that I truly believed that if I just educated my friends and family members about animal cruelty and the toll a meat-based diet had on our environment, they, too, would stop eating meat. But it wasn’t to be. In fact, oftentimes, to my chagrin, the information that I shared had the opposite effect.

At the time, I didn’t understand why but over the decades I’ve learned a lot including the knowledge that getting people to change isn’t easy and can, at times, be impossible. “People want things to be the same as they’ve always been, because that makes life easier,” says Richard Marcinko.

So what’s a frustrated, sole-champion-of-green-causes librarian do when all they hear at their library is one excuse after another (including no time, money, resources, or reason) as to why their library isn’t going green?

I have a suggestion: a resource that has helped me over the years better understand how and why people change. It’s The Stages of Change Model (SCM), originally developed in the late ’70s and early ’80s by James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente, which is also now being used on the green front.

An example is this National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration presentation, which may provide some insight if you’re hitting a few walls at your library. Hopefully it will empower you and help you make a few changes in your game plan to make your efforts even more effective.