Why is it so hard to change? Another excellent question that provokes a lot of thoughts from me. Everyone fears change in some way, shape or form. It's a natural instinct, like a self preservation. After all, fear in itself is a strong motivator. We are driven by 3 of the most powerful emotions known to most species.
1- Fear
2- Addictions
3- Love
I will talk about the first 2 right now, as they are tied together in more ways than you think. Because the common ground in fear and addiction is CHANGE!!! We fear the unknown and we fear our habits too, and that gives us consistency and security and if that somehow changes.... we are in a whirl of chaos instinctively. In short, if someone feels better with a smoke or beer or antidepressant, having them taken away promotes panic and fear. We were comfy getting our gratifying addictions met. We can be addicted to a person, and being without that person can pretty much make you feel like you lost an arm or something. We fear for our lives, or the lives of the people we deeply love, like our children and we have been known to pick up a car if our children were pinned under it in an accident or if someone grabbed our children, I can tell you that I would run threw fire, nails and at extreme speeds to catch up to the person who grabbed my kid, or die trying. It's fear.... the great motivator!
Now about the change part? Someone or something throwing a "monkey wrench" into my perfectly spinning wheel will definitely get my attention. I mean, I may not like my perfectly "spinning wheel" but it's consistency, right? It's called "Survival"
Our innate desire to survive, that is, our fear of death or being harmed, also instinctively drives us toward repetition. If we manage to survive a certain behavior, for example, we will likely survive it again. In this way we become prone to certain patterns of behavior. Make sense?
Much of human behavior, however, is more complex than that of other creatures. We are capable of, even dependent upon, learning much of our behavior from others. Through self reflection and self discipline we are often able to alter our patterns of behavior. But this does not mean we change our habits without any sort of reluctance, we fear change!!! No matter how miserable life can be, sometimes we would rather live in our tried and tested ruts than attempt something new for fear things might not work out and we'll end up worse off than we were to begin with. We are more than capable of ridding our neurosies and bad patterns or habits from our minds, but why rock the damn boat, right?
A few weeks ago, my Dad took me to eat at a Chinese Restaurant when I visited my hometown, I was in a bad place. I got one of them fortune cookies that said something on the line of "Be prepared for a sudden, good change in your life" or something similar to that. I superstitiously kept it in my journal, taped it up on the top of my daily page and reflected about all the possible changes that can occur, especially the "good things" Lord knows I need some positive change in my life!!! I guess I am eager to see if this prediction will come true. I found this particular fortune pleasing.... but I usually throw out the ones I don't like..... that way.... they won't come true. LOL I know sudden changes, no matter how necessary, are not always happy. I suspect if we were always guaranteed our excursions into the unknown would end favorably we would all be a lot less reluctant to change.
Ok, more on the "fear" part that "drives" us. Repetitive behavior is often based on "fear" and the basic instinct or "addiction" to survive is in all of us. So, we tend to fear sudden changes, even when necessary, because change means new behavior, untried things and untested ideas. Scary huh?
Fear helps us too. Look at the lab rats, and I seen this on one of them Discovery Channel/Animal Planet shows that rats are hard to kill because they won't eat the poison in the traps, because it is embred or instinct for them to not eat new foods or go near new smells because it's embedded in their DNA from all their "rat" ancestors. LOL It's true. All them "new" technologies don't really work, you gotta put that slice of cheese on the trap and it will most often work. Old tried and true approaches still work. And if it works for rats, it's GOT to work on humans.... I mean kids won't eat a certain food cause it smells different or looks different than what they are used to. They need to "grow" out of that "pickiness" right? We all did....well, some of us still think like children (ahem....I can name a few LOL)
So, just as my fortune cookie suggests, we "choose" to move into the future, that is, to face change, and our "built in fear" of the unknown, out of "necessity". It is often said that "Necessity is the Mother of Invention." In 1658, Richard Franck said that quote in response to a popular Proverb. (I heard this on The History Channel and decided to look into it.) So, it is ultimately our creativity, our productive need to better ourselves, that drives us forward, into the unknown. In short, it is our willingness to try something new, despite our fearful tendencies.
Holding onto the past, you know, the tried and true, by living out those repetitive patterns of behavior, may enable us to survive today, the same way we did yesterday, but also prevents us from making significant advancements. We end up living the same day over and over again Just like one of my favorite movies with Bill Murray in the film, "Groundhog Day". A perfect example of this innate human tension between moving forward and holding back, between creativity and fear.... yeah.... I like that analogy. I can't believe I thought of that..... it makes sense now. See, I am learning what's inside me as I blog and purge my thoughts.
Now, I am going to stretch out on a limb here and say that we as humans, are addicted to "Domination". We dominate out of FEAR!! I can name several examples to this fact because we have been doing this throughout history without fail. In some way, all of these have taken place in the World, some we over-came, others we haven't yet. For examples, Empires dominate the weak, Monarchs and Dictators dominate their people, men dominate women (especially in the workforce) adults dominate children, majorities dominate minorities, the rich dominate the poor (this is a big one that pisses me off) the "First" World countries, like the US and Canada dominate the "Third" World countries like Africa, Asia to name a couple, and people dominate animals, and technology dominates the environment and now look what we got? Global Warming which leads to self destruction. Some patterns HAVE to go!!!! It's so hard to break from the old pattern. Genuine creativity comes out of chaos and now we got the electric cars in the making, the "Green" products are being featured everywhere, recycling.... we are scared now, so we are getting "creative" with our uses of products and how we treat our World. We should have been thinking about this long ago, but we didn't and I haven't and I am right along with the "majority" of us learning to except change.
So the bottom line on this topic is that if we want to change our reality, we need to change our patterns. A simple concept that is so hard to do. Human instinct is so hard to change.
Franklin D. Roosevelt once said in his Inaugural Address that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" Brilliantly said Mr. Roosevelt.
Anya
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