The REAL Reason why YOU Won't CHANGE 🤯 (And How YOU CAN!)
If you are reading this, you are probably asking to yourself why you aren’t growing. After reading a few personal development books and watched some videos, implemented a couple habits and started meditation perhaps, you are essentially the same person as before – and you are like wondering if there’s something inherently wrong with you? Everyone seems to progress, get better, be happier, move forward in life while you, well, you keep being the same old and familiar you, right?
Is There A Magic Pill?
Einstein once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We feel stuck in life, not progressing in any way, but try some quick advice we’ve heard somewhere believing that that’s going to fundamentally and radically change who we are. We are as if waiting for that magical pill that will turn our world upside down but deep inside we know the answer – It’s the same old and familiar me, just with some new habit, gimmick or routine.
So, what is the real reason you don’t grow and change on a fundamental level? I want to argue, if you don’t mind me saying it, that the true reason you are not growing is because you actually don’t want to.
Our Comfort Zone – We Love It
The truth is that we are creatures of habit – we hate change. We despise leaving our comfort zone and trying a new way of being. And sure, we might love embellishing ourselves with tips and recommendations and advice, but we strive, secretly, to keep being essentially the same ones. And, like actors and actresses, we look forward to wearing our costumes and playing different characters, but when it’s time to get real, we take our dresses off and go home with the same familiar clothes.
We tell ourselves we would love to change but, in reality, we just want to keep being the same old me. Because the truth of the matter is that change is painful, change is difficult and, perhaps most importantly, change happens outside our comfort zone.
We might have heard this “comfort zone” thing a thousand times before but the fact that the only way to grow is through discomfort still evades our consciousness and reality. We over and over again fail to make it a reality, our reality. And this cannot be more clear than in the dictionary.
Antifragility
If you try and look for the antonym of fragility, you’ll find nothing. That’s why Nassim Taleb introduced a few years ago the inspiring concept of Antifragility. There are some things that break under pressure, while some others grow thanks to it. Antifragility, then, is an attribute of a system which thrives in discomfort.
Just like the best horses lose when they compete with slower ones but win against better rivals.
Just like muscles that only grow when the tissues are broken first.
Just like children can only become healthy adults when they are free to play and manage risks.
Just like necessity is the mother of innovation.
Just like wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire.
You can only grow amidst challenges.
If you want real, true change, you’ll need to embrace discomfort and jump directly into it. Each and every single day. A cushy life is an over-rated life. It’s a boring life.
Step Out of Your Comfort Zone!
You always have a decision to make between your comfortable way of being and a new, challenging, different one.
You are choosing to stale when you decide to skip that meditation session instead of putting the alarm and sitting down in front of a wall. Or when you decide to hit the snooze button instead of going to the gym. You decide to keep being the same old you when you react with anger instead of acting with understanding, when you give your word but break it because it’s not convenient for you anymore, when you fail to make your bed and spend your day with a messy room, when you watch a Netflix movie when you should be studying for your exams or when you lie knowing that telling the truth is extremely important for your integrity and well-being.
In each of those decisions, you are choosing to preserve and safeguard your petty self with its small needs and desires, and losing the possibility of building a healthier, better, much more empowered you.
You are choosing comfort over true transformation.
And you don’t need a far-reaching and complicated goal like climbing a mountain or starting a business to change. Even though that might part of your process, embracing discomfort also means to keep running when you are almost out of air, to kiss your family before going to sleep even though you had a rough day or to read the promised 10 daily pages although you are tired.
As the saying goes, “how you do anything is how you do everything.” This encompasses big things as well as small things, and every single one of them will help you grow, step by step and day by day.
It Will Be Dangerous
And just like bamboos that spend years with the same height until the time comes that they grow faster than any other plant, you might struggle trying to become better and transform, until one day you look back and realize everything you had accomplished and how much you had changed. Small things don’t bother you anymore, you wake up with a sense of purpose and fulfillment, and you are making a positive change in the world.
But this has a price. And it is stepping out of your comfort zone and embracing insecurity.
If there’s only one takeaway that you get from this article is that you always have to roads you can go through: the comfortable and the uncomfortable. If you choose the former, you’ll keep being that same one, the one that got you this far. But you have a second path. If you choose the emotionally challenging one, you’ll suffer, you’ll have a bad time and you’ll want out. But is right then and there that change happens. There’s the possibility of true transformation. You will encounter circumstances, problems and decisions that will require you to change because you cannot reach the end of that road being the same one that started it. Perhaps it’s a small difference, perhaps it’s a big one, but the one who got in and got out will be… different. And that’s a reward in itself.
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