Q: I just read your column in todays' Greensboro News and Record. For the last few years I've been struggling with change, and found your suggestions about change tools to be useful. I was wondering if you have a favorite change tool, and if you would share it with us in a column?

Im glad you liked the column on change and found it useful for you. And I do have a favorite change tool, and its called the 3 Picture Technique.

Here are the steps:

1. Specifically define a problem that you are committed to changing.

2. In your own imagination, create three pictures of yourself in the following situations:

How the problem got started - it doesnt have to be an exact date like November 5th, 1992. Just your own sense of when and how this problem began.

How it is now - include what is painful and uncomfortable. This will increase your leverage and motivation for change.

How you would like it to be - create a picture, in the near future, when this problem is solved and things are like you would want them to be.

3. Pretend that we can set up a conference call between these three pictures, as if these three people could talk to each other.

4. Create a conversation between the you now and the you when the problem got started. If you could talk to the person you were when the problem began, how would you answer these questions:

What have you learned about this situation since it began? After you have answered that question, its important to remember that you have survived and are therefore a resilient person.

If you could send that person a letter entitled Things I Knew When I Was You?, what would you say?

5. Now lets have you talk with the you in the near future, when the problem is solved and things are how you would like them to be. Looking through that future persons eyes, answer the following questions:

What does the person in the future know that you dont know quite yet?

If you could walk out to your mailbox today and get a letter from the you in the future (I dont know how you would do the postage on it!), entitled things I wish I knew when I was you, what would it say?

What are the very next steps and actions to take to head in that direction?

This technique accomplishes at least two important things:

1) It allows you to clean up the past and remove things that are blocking you from changing, and

2) Provides you with clear direction and actions to get the changes you desire.