Change Will Happen

The definition of change is: to become altered or modified; to shift from one state to another; an ending of the present state of being and beginning of a new one; to become different.

Resistance to Change

You wouldn’t think that a simple word could strike terror into a person’s life but the word change does exactly that to many people. The vast majority of people fear change because of a few reasons. One, because of lack of knowledge or skill – I’m unaware of what’s going on around me, I don’t know something I think I need to know, I’m not clear enough about what I’m trying to do, I haven’t practiced something or I’m just starting a brand new thing – so lack of knowledge or skill is one reason.

Second, physical or resource restrictions – there’s something that is beyond my physical capabilities; I’m not strong enough, big enough, young enough, old enough. Or I’m lacking in resources of some kind – it could be a lack of money, lack of time, lack of tools or technology that I might need to perform whatever the act is. So number two, physical or resource restrictions can get in our way.

The third thing that causes problems when change occurs is because of negative past or future projections. We project into the past and go “Oh, I’ve never been any good at this before, how could I possibly do well at this new thing now” or I sit and look at what’s going on, I see the changes occurring and I think “Ah, this is not going to work for me, if I screw this up the future’s going to be bad, I’m going to have problems, there’ll be difficulties,” so negative projections into our past or our future can cause difficulties when change occurs.

The fourth difficulty that comes up with change is we feel uncomfortable. I like things the way they are now. My discomfort with the change process is because the way it is now is okay, this is fine with me, I can do what I’m doing, I can just keep moving along in the same way, it really is okay but in many cases we need to bring about change whether it’s clothing or furniture or vehicles or the way we do a task. We need to move out of our comfort zone a bit and allow that discomfort to be there while making the change into something that will be better for us.