1. Realize your jam, fix, or issue, is not about someone else; solutions don’t depend on trying to teach, fix, or change someone else. You are the persistent part, the ever-present piece in all of the issues you face.
2. Begin with taking personal responsibility, seeing what it is you can do differently from what you have done in the past.
3. Work your way out privately (don’t announce it to the world) and slowly (don’t try to go too quickly).
4. Know that there are always more options than might be first apparent. Once you move beyond the initial impact of what you are facing, spend some time thinking. Options formerly clouded by anxiety, will begin to emerge.
5. Given several emerging and unexpected choices, take the more adventurous option, the less obvious choice. This will till the soil of your life and bring you new-found zeal.
6. As you work your way out of your fix by taking new and risky choices, behave in such a way that you have others asking, “What got into him/her?” This will help others see that your healthy unpredictability is part of your desire to shift former unproductive patterns.
7. Welcome and expect resistance – especially from those to whom you are closest. It’s the by-product of all change. Change upset the power balance in relationships and it is usually, at least at first, resisted.