Change to improve health, establish new habits or grow professionally. Have you noticed how difficult it is for us to carry out these processes? There are factors that prevent us from doing so and that you would like to know to deactivate them. We explain them to you!
Behavior change is a psychological engineering process that requires the intervention of a very particular cognitive and emotional artifact: the mind. Few processes are as complex as they are frustrating. Have you tried to establish the habit of going to the gym, but you give up following a few days? Would you like to improve your character and you see it as almost impossible? All this leads you to question why it costs so much to change.
Effectively making a behavior transformation stick long-term is not easy. It is not, in the first place, because the brain finds it difficult to accept the changes. He will always prefer homeostasis, that is, that everything remains in balance and does not vary. However, our progress as human beings, including our well-being, requires assimilating new habits.
Changing to reach our best version, achieve goals and feel better is something that we should all promote. To achieve this, it will be useful for us to know those psychological enemies that make it impossible to integrate different behaviors and attitudes. Because this mechanism requires more than courage: it demands new mental tools from us.
Sometimes, even though we are going through an adverse situation, we cannot find the mechanisms for change. There are unconscious psychological factors that reinforce keeping us immobile.
Change always requires mobilizing multiple psychological resources.
If there is something that we promote from psychology, it is the change in behavior to favor improvements in people. We offer mechanisms so that, by themselves, they take the step to well-being, to the achievement of healthy goals. However, the evidence tells us that our brain is dominated by unconscious mechanisms that make it difficult to integrate new habits.
Research from the University of Vermont, for example, makes an important point. Changing a behavior is a complex and highly unstable process, that is, there are relapses, steps back and abandonment. Not being able to sustainably maintain these new behaviors or attitudes can have a negative impact on physical and mental health. It is, therefore, a relevant issue.
One way to deal with these resistances is by knowing them. Because, we insist, many times the difficulty does not lie in a lack of will or discipline. There are underlying psychological processes that we drag along for years and that we should detect to deactivate. We analyze them below.
Your limiting beliefs
Limiting beliefs are negative opinions or perceptions that we have of ourselves and that condition us. It is essential to know that a good part of them are gestated in childhood and education. Often, we incorporate completely invalidating messages from the outside that diminish our worth, virtues and strengths.
Believing that we are not capable of something, that we are fallible or not very competent are major obstacles to the process of change.
An excess of negatively valenced emotions
Imagine that your relationship is bad, that you are very unhappy. You know that you should take the step and leave that bond, but doing so scares you. If you’re wondering why it’s so hard to change and move forward, negatively valenced emotions are an indisputable factor. There is anguish, anxiety, guilt, sadness and even shame.
This accumulation of sensations fills your mind with adverse and even fatalistic ideas. You fear failure or regret; to this is added the fear of the unknown. What will happen following the change?
Many times we see the changes with fear, we feel insecure and we fear what happens next. This makes it difficult to take the first step.
Impostor syndrome and low self esteem
Taking a step forward, more than efforts, requires commitment and full confidence in oneself. If the latter fails, everything collapses. In this way, it is very common, for example, that people with impostor syndrome (those who believe that they are not intelligent and that they are never up to almost anything) find it difficult to establish new habits.
When one is not in tune with their worth and also shows low self-esteem, it is difficult to promote long-term change.
It’s hard to change because of your cognitive dissonances and self-deception
Knowing that a sedentary lifestyle takes its toll on health, but telling us that they are nothing more than false myths. Understanding that we should look for a better job, but arguing, in turn, that it is better to have something safe, even if it is precarious. Cognitive dissonances are mechanisms that allow us to rationalize our own inconsistencies to avoid psychological suffering.
Given this, if you wonder why it costs so much to change, it is recommended that you review some of your self-deceptions. You may be very aware that you need to take new steps in your life, but they scare you. And to avoid that anguish, you resort to very artificial reasoning that justifies that you are still in your comfort zone.
You underestimate the process
A change does not happen overnight. Promoting it requires a meticulous craft that demands emotional, behavioral, and cognitive elements. Overlooking those components will cause us to fail in that attempt. Also that, with each step back, self-image and self-esteem come crashing down.
Successful change is the result of multiple interconnected steps that require commitment, clarity of purpose, and a healthy dose of enthusiasm. However, sometimes, due to a lack of awareness and tools to understand these processes, we err in them.
Strategies for effective change
Science has always been concerned with change. A study from the University of Helsinki and Ireland, for example, highlights something striking. Social, emotional, and also biological factors are integrated into the potential for human change.
To achieve it, you must work from motivational, behavioral and educational aspects, to review many of the beliefs that are integrated into your psychological universe. It is time to reflect on those tools that will facilitate this process.
1. To awaken your motivation, remember your reasons for the change
Motivation is not always found when we need it. There are days when the forces fail and the mind does not respond. If you need to initiate a change, you must clarify your purposes and the reason why you need to take that step. That will be your daily fuel.
2. Action plan: plan-evaluate-correct
When starting a new habit or establishing a transformation, it is necessary to define an action plan. It is not good to improvise, the ideal is to design the steps to follow and, later, evaluate that process. Is it being useful to us? Should we modify something? Every plan must be flexible to adapt to each challenge and circumstance.
3. Manage stress
It is necessary to integrate stress management resources into our day to day. After all, all change places us in new scenarios that make us stagger or accumulate emotions of negative valence. Do not hesitate to practice some sport, relaxation technique or meditation. With them you will give way to a more relaxed mind and a body with less cortisol.
4. Boost your self-efficacy: you are skilled and competent
Self-efficacy is the confidence we have in our abilities to achieve what we want. This is the most decisive psychological tendon when integrating a change in life. It is knowing that we have the resources to achieve it, that we are skilled and that we have the skills to succeed.
5. Yes to small daily advances: less is always more
In the book Atomic Habits, by James Clear, he tells us regarding the power of small daily achievements. Sometimes big changes require only small daily advances, being constant and focusing on our purpose. For this reason, he remembers that it is not good to rush or make too many variations at the same time. Better little by little.
6. Discipline and action
Many times we look at motivation when initiating a change. But this emotional element doesn’t always show up when we need it most. That is when the most decisive factor comes into play: discipline. That’s right, we must be disciplined and understand that establishing new habits requires commitment, action and repetition.
7. Resistance to frustration
Who has not felt frustrated when seeing how difficult it is to initiate a change? Nothing is as common as taking a step back, failing, crashing for a few days, and then moving forward once more. No change is linear, there are always ups and downs and we must know how to resist and accept them.
There is no change is easy, but the small daily steps guided by the confidence in ourselves will serve as a guide.
Commitment to change
If you have wondered why it costs so much to change, you should know that this is a shared experience. You are not the only one. It is worth reminding yourself that you have extraordinary potential to achieve it. You can do it. Commit yourself to these steps, make them yours and you will conquer that peak that you so long for for your well-being and self-realization.
Source: The Mind is Wonderful.-
