The Coronavirus pandemic has revealed a very big secret we've been
keeping from ourselves and each other: We can be remarkably agile in the
face of change.
How is it that we are able to so radically and rapidly change our daily
behavior in order to follow the social distancing and stay-at-home
policies during the pandemic, and yet--pandemic or not--we typically
find it difficult, if not impossible, to reach smaller personal goals
like dieting, getting organized or changing destructive habits?
The pandemic is life-threatening, so it ignites our survival instincts,
activating that part of our brains charged with speedily and efficiently
getting us to safety. But cholesterol, alcohol, and physical passivity
are all life-threatening, and many of us humans have done a lousy job
changing in regard to these issues, even when we have reliable
information that they are killing us. Why do we struggle to change what
would so obviously help ourselves individually?
Ross Ellenhorn's book, How we Change (and the Ten Reasons Why We
Don't) gives a fascinating answer. A clinician and thought leader in
the mental health and addiction fields, he suggests that we're often
looking in the wrong direction when we try to decipher the factors that
support human change. He suggests that it's much more fruitful to look
at why we don't change, than figure out why we do. By looking at the
reasons we don't change, we give ourselves the best chance of actually
changing in meaningful ways.
Ellenhorn explains how we are wired to double down on the familiar
because of what he calls the "Fear of Hope" - the act of protecting
ourselves from further disappointment--and identifies the "10 Reasons
Not to Change" to help us see why we behave the way we do when we are
faced with the challenge of hope. Among them are:
- To change means raising your expectations and thus risking that
you'll disappoint yourself.
- Once you change, you are more accountable to make other changes than
if you stayed the same
- When you change, your future become much less predictable.
- Change means destroying psychological monuments you've built to
commemorate past injuries
- Every time you change, you raise the possibility of losing or
disrupting your relationship with certain people
By addressing this little known reality of fear of hope, and how it
influences the 10 Reasons Not to Change, Ellenhorn actually gives us
hope, helping us to work toward the change we seek. Ellenhorn speaks to
the core of our insecurities and fears about ourselves, with a humor and
kindness. By turning our judgments about self-destructive behaviors into
curious questions about them, he teaches us to think about our actions
to discover what we truly want - even if we're going about getting it in
the wrong way.
How We Change is a brilliant approach that will forever alter our
perspective - and help us achieve the transformation we truly seek.
