It’s a new year, and you might be thinking about some changes you would like to make. But if you’re like most of us, you tend to get pretty excited about those changes for a little while, but find it challenging to make them stick. I know plenty of folks who buy treadmills in January, only to be using them as clothing racks by the end of February. Do you want this year to be different?
Someone once taught me an equation for how people change: P + V > R. P, which represents “Pain,” combines with V (“vision”) to overcome R, which represents “resistance.” What’s the resistance all about? As humans, our tendency is to stick with what is familiar, even if it’s not working for us. It’s the idea that the hell we do know is better than the one we don’t. We’re hanging on so tightly to what we already have that we can’t let go long enough to even consider how life might change or get better, even if what we’re attached to is actually decreasing our happiness on a daily basis. This reminds me of my dog, who loves nothing more than to chase her ball. But she won’t let go of it so that we can throw it. She sits there, miserable, guarding the ball and growling-sort of a metaphor for the way a lot of us live.
Resistance is pretty powerful stuff. It can take a lot of forms: inertia, lack of motivation, negative self-talk, excuses, procrastination or anxiety. I often experience it as busyness. When I was working on my thesis and had a deadline, I had a sudden, inexplicable urge to reorganize every kitchen cabinet. A lot of this resistance is the same thing: fear. Fear of change or fear of failure (“it’s better to just stick to the way that things are, because it’s safer that way”) or a fear of this new, sudden, unrecognizable person we might become if we just allowed ourselves the space to grow.
So how do some people overcome resistance and make changes? Well, sometimes you don’t have a choice. Sometimes the choice is made for you. A situation becomes so painful (P) that it becomes more comfortable to change than to stay in your current situation. Change is not an option. Or sometimes you have such a powerful idea or vision for your life (V) that your excitement and hope empowers you to overcome resistance to change, and you transform your life.
What if it’s something in the middle? What if you’re mildly uncomfortable, and know you want some kind of change, but don’t know what exactly that is? In this scenario, P+V might not be strong enough to overcome R, so how do you increase your odds? Increase the pain, and increase the vision.
“Increase the pain?!? Are you crazy?” I’m sure that’s what you’re saying, but stay with me. Odds are that if you’re getting some clues that you are unhappy or uncomfortable with a situation, you are in more pain than you think.
Humans do a wonderful job of disguising our discomfort-it’s a coping strategy for surviving day-to-day life. Just think-if you started to really pay attention to the various parts of your life that are hurting, it might feel overwhelming (and then you might have to make some major change, which is scary, so we’re back to resistance again). This is why nearly every therapist I know (myself included) has a disclosure statement that new clients sign which tells them that sometimes it feels like things get worse before they get better, and that is actually part of the therapeutic process. As you gain awareness, it starts to hurt a whole lot more for a little bit. That’s OK: it’s unpleasant, but you WILL survive.
To increase your V (vision), you can create and become comfortable with a compelling vision of how you will feel and be after you’ve made changes in your life, and you need to stay connected to that vision-it will help you overcome resistance when you get stuck.
So here are some concrete tips to put this into action. I’ll use the example here of losing weight, since that’s a popular subject of conversation. To increase P, start to make a list of all the ways that carrying extra weight might be affecting your life. Maybe you don’t enjoy buying clothes as much as you used to, or you can’t participate in the physical activities that you could if you were in better shape. Write these things down. Keep a journal-any time during the day that you notice a discomfort around this issue, write it down. Read it. Maybe you notice that you don’t feel that much pain. Maybe you do.
Now, start creating a vision. Write it down. What would life look like if you were in better shape or you felt healthier? How would you feel different? What would you be able to do? Let yourself be excited about this new vision. Odds are, if you get connected with your pain, as well as with your vision, you will feel motivated to start to change.
This exercise can be applied to any goal. If you want to change jobs, get connected with the pain you feel in your current situation, and start to envision a new, better situation, one in which you are at your best and feel creative and appreciated.
We don’t want to feel or notice our pain, but awareness is the starting point for all change, for everyone. We all have the capacity to transform our lives, every day. In the words of the poet, Rumi, “You were born with wings/why prefer to crawl through life?”