Life Change Blog

12th July 2010.

Welcome to The Monday Morning Life Change Blog. We publish an article every Monday morning about Life, Change and Living in Thailand. We hope you enjoy them.

Not Changing in Hua Hin, Thailand

We’re coming to the end of our 2 week residency at Chiva Som Spa and Wellness Holiday Resort on the beautiful Gulf of Thailand where we’ve been offering Relationship Counselling, Change Therapy sessions and staff training in motivational psychology (which the reception staff decided to call “Change and be Happy Training” which I really quite like). On our days off we’ve also managed to swap our work clothes for our “holiday clothes” and join all the other holiday makers on the beach and sea front.

One thing that both residents and holiday makers alike really enjoy here are the fantastic sea food restaurants along the sea front. I love the steamed mussels with ginger, basil and lemon grass, and Tom Kha Gung (a fragrant coconut soup with lemon grass, chilli and big shrimps).

Changing Tack

Unfortunately, the walk down to the sea food restaurants is lined with tailor shops. I use the word “unfortunately”, not because I have developed an irrational fear of tailors, but their rather odd sales technique. They tend to huddle outside their shops and hustle and hassle passers by for business. Recently one chap accosted me and said “sir, why you not look in my shop” in a rather accusatory way. I was rather baffled as it hadn’t even occurred to me that I should look in his shop seeing as I wasn’t thinking of buying any hand made clothes. “I don’t know” I said in a rather lame apologetic way. He just looked at me rather pityingly.

Last night they “upped the anti” and while we were walking along looking forward to our coconut soup the young Indian tailor guy came up and fell in step by my side, took my arm in his hand and said warmly “Sir, how do you feel today”. I was really very baffled and wondered; a) why he was asking such a bizarre question, and b) how this would end up with me purchasing a handmade silk suit. I suppose he was hoping that I would say “actually, now you come to mention it I feel like buying a silk suit” and an effective sale would have been made. But, I didn’t, instead I tried to say something polite that would be neither rude nor dismissive or lead further along the surreal road of discussing my feelings and shirt sales.

Change Holidays and Change

It really reminded me of how unhelpful it feels to be nagged or pushed when you either don’t want to do something, or feel ambivalent about something. It relates to one of the models we use on our counseling retreat and change holidays, that recognizes that when we are undecided about change we actually need something to help us “make our mind up” rather than just being told what we should do.  It has become a phenomenon researched extensively over the past 20 years and is now very well established, first identified by researchers Prochaska and DiClemente who became well known with their creation of the Trans Theoretical Model of Change. Changes that last are changes that we really want to make rather than things we are told to do, especially when it comes to being hassled in the street by pushy tailors.

I’m really tempted to go back and offer the tailor guys some free training in behaviour change principles but fear that it would merely lead me further down the slippery slope of trying to explain both why I hadn’t looked in their shop yet and how I was feeling. Perhaps an email might be safer.

If you are interested in making changes in your life, how not to respond to tailors in Hua Hin or Change Holidays do just contact us through our contact page.

Bye for now, hope you enjoy our life change blogs, have a good week, Alex.