The Frustrating Reality
Have you ever known exactly what to do and still not done it? In a relationship, with your health, with finances, or creating boundaries? Most people can relate to at least one of these examples. If so, you’ve experienced firsthand that a lack of knowledge is rarely the problem.
Why Intelligence Doesn’t Solve It
Intelligence doesn’t always solve it either. Have you ever thought, “I’m a reasonably smart person. If I understand the problem, I’ll be able to solve it”? I know I have. But understanding a problem and taking the action required to solve it are often two very different skills.
Intelligence helps us understand problems. Change requires us to tolerate discomfort.
The Hidden Forces Behind Stuckness
- Competing Wants
Sometimes we want two things at the same time that seem mutually exclusive. For example, “I want to lose weight and I want to eat chocolate every day.” This happens when one part of you wants one thing and another part wants something else.
- Immediate vs. Long-Term Rewards
Sometimes the challenge is that we don’t want to give up what we want right now for what we want in the future. For example, “I want those $200 pair of shoes and I want to be debt-free.”
- Emotional Attachments
It can also be challenging to let go of something you are emotionally attached to. This can happen in relationships, jobs, and locations. For example, you know you’d be better off changing your environment and moving somewhere else for a fresh start, but you don’t want to leave what’s familiar.
- Identity
Our identity is often tied up with our behavior. Perhaps you want to get out more and meet more people, but you always hesitate because you tell yourself that you’re shy and don’t have the courage to introduce yourself to strangers. Sometimes lasting change requires changing the way you see yourself.
- Fear
I have always said, “People don’t change until the pain of staying the same exceeds their fear of change.” I’ve stayed in relationships longer than I should have, long after I recognized they aren’t working for me, mainly because I feared what life would have be like without the person I loved. There was so much good there. I tend to stay until the pain has increased, making it hard to ignore the decision to face the unknown.
What Actually Creates Movement
- Awareness is often the beginning of making a change. You can’t change without an awareness of the challenge and some awareness of your options and their potential consequences, good, bad, and neutral.
- Honest self-evaluation comes next. You must ask yourself the question, “Is what I’m doing helping or hurting me in getting what I most want?”
- Ownership of both the problem and the solution. If I truly want to change, I need to accept my part in the problem. If I don’t, I risk remaining in a victim mindset. And if I remain in a victim mindset, that leaves me no agency to contribute to the solution. When I own my part of the problem, I can see what my choices are. Not what I want others to do, that’s a fool’s errand, but what I can do myself to make the situation better for me.
- Practice the new skills. You must repeat the new skills over and over again to prevent sliding back into old behavior.
- Support comes in the form of better outcomes for you and it can also come from people in your life who are cheerleading your changes. But be cautious with the latter, because you likely have some people in your usual support system who would be happier if you just stayed the same. It isn’t their fault. The older version of you may have been more need-satisfying for them so consciously or subconsciously, they may encourage you not to make changes or not to continue with them. Be sure you recognize this for what it is.
If you’d like help identifying what may be keeping you stuck, the Mental Freedom Experience is designed to increase awareness, clarify choices, and support meaningful change.
The Choice Theory Connection
Those of you who know me know that my work is based on the work of William Glasser, MD’s Choice Theory psychology. Choice Theory postulates that behavior is always our best attempt to meet our needs.
When we understand which of the five basic needs is driving a particular behavior, it shines a light on some alternative behaviors we might develop to be able to let go of the one that isn’t working as well as it could.
Reflection
What area of your life feels stuck right now? What need might be driving your resistance?
