Change and resistance...
"...as the saying goes, old habits die hard. Even when faced with a life-threatening situation, people tend to resist change despite knowing the repercussions. Studies reveal that when heart disease patients who had undergone traumatic bypass surgery were told if they did not adjust their lifestyle they would die, or at best undergo the life-saving procedure again, only 9% modified their behaviour." - Sue Langley
I have been reading a little more this week on change and why we find it so difficult, or why we resist it.
I resisted change in my own life from fear. Of the unknown. Of not feeling safe mostly. It caused me to lie to myself about who I really was and what I really wanted.
But things really did have to change. Illness was playing a huge role in my life and looking back big issues with mental and emotional health too.
The reason for change often comes as force. The need for transformation comes from illness, such as mine, or from a difficult life experience like divorce or even the breakdown of a family relationship.
Or it can come through intentional change which often brings about the process with a more positive outcome. But generally we don't change by choice.
My biggest bug bear is the new year, new you concept. So many people fail even with the best intentions. Gyms make a fortune out of people who go for it and fall at the first hurdle.
"The very design of our brain prompts us to take the easy way out. Change requires a rewiring of our brain’s pathway, which prefer to follow comfortable and familiar patterns." - Sue Langley
But many people change their lives and become completely different people despite this inner resistance. We are made as humans to adapt and change, we have evolved over thousand of years and have expanded and grown. We are made for life long learning and we hold huge potential.
But it takes intention and commitment and effort and that is the hard part.
As the above statement shows, even when some of us have the threat of life changing surgery or death, we still won't change.
Comfortable behaviours are the easiest and our brains love to take the easy route. But when we get uncomfortable, things start to shift, we feel a threat and it makes us move.
So, we have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
The book The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter has this to say; "A radical new body of evidence shows that people are at their best—physically harder, mentally tougher, and spiritually sounder—after experiencing the same discomforts our early ancestors were exposed to every day. Scientists are finding that certain discomforts protect us from physical and psychological problems like obesity, heart disease, cancers, diabetes, depression, and anxiety, and even more fundamental issues like feeling a lack of meaning and purpose.”
Where in your life are you resisting change?
What is keeping you stuck?
Are you waiting for some discomfort to get you out?
Or are you ready to intentionally bring in some discomfort to your life?
"The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers." - M. Scott Peck