We Only Change When We Understand Why We Should

This blog contains many articles about ways to change ourselves personally: to change our thinking, to find our talents and our purpose. It strikes me that personal change only really happens when we want to change, and understand why we must change. If we always do things the same way we have always done them, and repeat the same patterns, we will keep getting the same results. It is not about trying harder and harder, it is about learning from mistakes, learning from feedback, and making adjustments and changing to get different results.

Change must be self motivated

The way I suggest the ideas in these articles might make personal change seem easy, however I do know that change is hard. I was told for years to write down my goals and dreams, or to define my values, but this never really made sense to me. Why should I do that? I am quite happy the way I am thank you! What's in it for me?! I believe this is a common phenomena in society. Unless I come to the realisation myself about what is needed, I am not going to change. If someone gives me feedback on something I need to change I might get offended or hurt, but I still might not see what I need to do as it falls outside my comprehension, into my blind spots (See blog article: Blindspots and secrets). I might only change immediately if there is some form of punishment or fear attached, for example if I am constantly late for work because of lack of motivation and if I think nothing will change this I soon see that I can be on time if I know I will lose my job as a consequence. But I might still sit at my desk totally unmotivated, whiling away time. Being on time should be something I believe in myself as a value, that I really want to do, and once I integrate this concept I will make sure to adhere to it. It must come from the heart. And I need to go to the heart of the problem, which in this case is motivation. If I see that my time problem actually lies in my lack of motivation I can address that, and perhaps if I find meaning in the job I do, or do a different job, this might improve self esteem at work and give me a reason to feel enthusiastic about going to work in the morning. But only I can do this for myself.

We must define our own answers

I was told about the example of a homeless person given a new pair of trousers to wear, and yet he did not wear them in the coming weeks. Why would this be? I wondered if it might be because he felt they were foreign to him, that he might prefer his old clothes as something he knew and that were comfortable. He might be worried about getting the new clothes dirty or not have facilities to iron and wash them. Or he might even have sold the trousers for food. Another reason is he might not want to wear them as he begged for money, and couldn't do so in brand new clothes. Or it could be that he saw no reason for new clothes and thought he had looked perfectly fine before. We can't see ourselves as other people see us. I might think he needed new clothes but he didn't believe so and might not have seen this would make him more approachable, and perhaps what he really wanted was only some food to eat.

Change brings connection

I believe a key point to realising the need for change is that it is not just about me or about you in isolation. Why must we be presentable? Why must we be friendly? Why must we be able to work with other people? This is what the people around us expect of us. We thrive on connections and support of other people. It is difficult to do things alone on our own strength. We need to be connected to others and be contributing to the world to feel we are valued and accepted. Unconditional acceptance of a person goes a long way to healing old wounds. All of us should accept the people around us, and at the same time we must not accept bad behaviour. Being cooperative and friendly helps us to get along with the people around us. This does not mean relinquish your opinion, only be tactful about giving your opinion. You and I are easily hurt by statements that challenge our identity and trigger emotions. And most importantly we need to be good role models for our children and our youth.

Change may happen slowly
We have taken a lifetime to get to where we are with our current mindsets and behaviour, and it may take a while to change these ingrained patterns due to a process called limbic lag. I wrote about limbic lag in the blog article titled When fear gets in the way (part 1). We might really want to change and make a decision to change, but making this an integral part of the way we behave and part of our habits sometimes take a long time, as we are sometimes caught back in the emotion and react from the more primitive emotional brain, for example when fear takes over. We need to retrain our brain to react in the new ways we want to. It has taken a lifetime for us to learn our behaviours, and it takes time to learn new behaviours, but change can happen. I have seen change happen in my own mindsets, and it is a freeing experience. Often we will only really start to change when we realise emotionally what the pattern is that we have been using. Have you ever known something about yourself, and thought you knew the effect it was having (thinking), only to later have a light bulb moment about that same pattern, and the real problem just hits you (an emotional awareness)? I believe it's when we have this light bulb moment about a pattern we may not have been aware of that real change starts to happen. This awareness process happens differently for each of us. There are no easy formulas to awareness and change. Change can be a hit and miss affair and often an unexpected reaction from someone might trigger this process for us, like a kind word when a fight was expected, called a hinge moment (more about hinge moments in another article). 

In conclusion

And now I wonder if this concept of realising own change is the centre point of an intricate beautiful spider web that's the complexity of personal growth and discovery. Another analogy is that real paradigm shifts happen like a series of dominoes falling. For many people who work on their own personal growth, especially related to matters of self worth or to fix past trauma, this process will take an enormous amount of time. Small changes will be hard to see at first, until one day we look again and real change has occurred in a person. Real change can happen. The entire set of dominoes will line up, none missing or out of kilter, and then watch how they all start falling into place.

Links to related blog articles:

• Thoughts on healing in action gives some ways we might move towards inner healing
• Sometimes we don't change as we have blind spots we need to be aware of first. See article Blind spots and secrets
• Learning from criticism
• When fear gets in the way (part 1)