Why is it so difficult to change?
There are two basic answers to this important question. Firstly, you need to know how and what to change. Secondly, you need to be aware of what will frustrate change.
What frustrates change?
There are many aspects of conditioning which will frustrate an individual’s effort to change. People have more psychological baggage than they usually care to admit. Avoidance rules. Hypocrisy is the cancer of anyone who has thoughts of becoming a better human being. Conditioning has already got its stranglehold by the age of five years or thereabouts. How someone is in the playground frequently determines their adult life, albeit in a more sophisticated or complex fashion.
When it comes to avoidance, people can suddenly become incredibly creative. Excuses roll off the tongue as easily as water off a duck’s back.
To get off the hook, someone will wriggle as strongly and persistently as an eel. Common sense and reason usually fade into the background. Values normally held are ditched if they clash with the defence/escape strategy. It is avoidance at any cost.
Excuses hold you back from learning. The old is continually reinforced. Awareness becomes selective or stunted. You hear what you want to hear, and see what you want to see. Anything threatening your “safe” view of life is thereby controlled and usually avoided. This makes it difficult to grow in a healthy, balanced way. Reality is distorted. Evasion develops into being a friend, when it is actually an enemy. Excuses justify inaction, when you should be giving. Excuses prolong and sanitise selfishness.
Complacency sets in when there is avoidance and dullness. There is no urgency, no reality. Forgetfulness is another tool of defensiveness. The person believes it is “easier” to ignore than to confront, to let a powerful insight fade rather than to move forward.
Distractions
People entertain and distract themselves with the “I want more” mentality. There is always something new to desire. The grass looks greener on the other side. All of this helps turn attention away from the bigger picture of what is going wrong in the world and what needs to be done.
This distraction mentality doesn’t necessarily go away just because someone starts searching for that “something more”; in most instances,
the searching is merely bolted on to what is already there. People’s desire for new experiences frequently shows up as a problem in their searching; “the answer” might always be just over the next green hill.
When there is self-centredness, there will be excessive self-expression.
You will matter more than the voice of a starving child or the plight of an endangered species. There is self-obsession, rather than true giving.
Self-indulgence happens as a result of the normal “me, me, me” psychology, whether it is from a perspective of self-importance or self-pity.
Fear and overestimating awareness
The majority of people are afraid to let go. They are fearful of taking chances, unwilling to put their existing psychology (albeit limited) at risk. The need for safety and self-defence dominates. There is a lack of motivation for going beyond. People settle for crumbs, often mouldy ones at that. They rarely or never realise that they hold the key to a greater freedom and healthier psychology.
Awareness is obviously important. But it is overrated. On its own, it will achieve nothing. Indeed, it can lead to an aloof arrogance. It is easy to confuse awareness with achievement. There must be some resulting action of an appropriate kind.
So it is crucial to understand what things will probably frustrate your efforts to change. You need to be self-aware and determined to overcome these pitfalls. They are like a minefield, ready to blow up your good intentions. Ignore them at your peril. You must learn where your own psychological mines lay, appreciate that they are only the tools of defensiveness, and then de-activate their destructive power.
Bursting the bubble
Despite some clear knowledge being widely available, there is nevertheless a huge amount of misunderstanding about what human potential is and how it can be achieved. People have been trying to change themselves for the past few thousand years, yet selfishness persists and genuine success seems elusive. Part of the problem is the blind leading the blind. But there is a bigger problem.
Bursting the bubble of selfishness is a subtly difficult task. Psychological avoidance works; it does what it says - keeping people “safe”, stuck, and only half awake. Avoidance also makes sure that self-deception is strong. It is easy to get sidetracked on this unknown journey. A common tendency is to play at changing, dumbing down any serious resolve to excel.
There is a misunderstanding of scale. People seriously underestimate the extent of the “me, me, me” mentality and their psychological baggage. They do not realise nor want to face the strength of some habits that must be changed, such as making “I can’t, because…” excuses. In reality, most people get nowhere; at best they wander in the foothills of change, when there is actually a mountain to climb. Delusion, self-obsession, and even self-importance add still further layers of problems.
The above summary explains why it is so difficult to change. Unlearning is an important part of learning. The Human Potential Trust offers a realistic way forwards.