When You Don't Want to Change

Let's be honest, change sucks & is SO much effort. Is it wrong to say, "I'm all good right now, no thanks" when you think about a change you could make? There is power in saying no to change.

Sometimes it feels good to eat twenty Oreos with a glass of red wine while you watch a documentary on your favorite k-pop band. Sometimes it feels good to sit in a place where you are angry at someone or resentful about what someone else did to you. Sometimes it feels good to skip the gym deliberately. I know because I have done them all. Just because I write about setting goals and lifestyle changes LIKE A LOT doesn’t mean I didn’t eat Chick-fil-A on Tuesday, haven’t skipped the gym, or harbored anger and resentment recently.

I am married, so simmering anger happens several times a week. Sometimes two charming and easy-going people get married and rarely fight—I generally think they don’t talk ever, but I am willing to trust that people are gifted in different ways and could be able to compromise exactly at 50/50 without an argument.

In our case, two people with extremely strong feelings and opinions married. Our marriage is like the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow?There was a little girl.?When it is good, it is really good; when it is bad, it is horrid. Anyway, the point is that I understand sitting in mucky feelings, feeling unjustly justified, and reveling in it. I understand being in a spot where I don’t want to put in the work for my relationship, my eating, and prioritizing time with friends outside my normal routine. Should I feel guilty or weak on these nights or days when I don’t do what I know and think I should do? Perfection isn’t obtainable, so where is my middle ground?

We live in a self-help society where you will find hundreds of thousands of books, not to mention podcasts, newsletters, and social media pages dedicated to making you?the best human you can become.?You can read or listen to how to feel great, eat great, exercise like a beast, lose 27 pounds a day, meditate like a boss, have a kick-ass marriage, and raise kids that will be emotionally well-adjusted.

But what happens if you are just not ready to listen? What if you don’t want to do the work? What if you don’t want to change? Well, saying when you are not ready to change can actually be good. When you can say, I am not ready to give up ____ you are demonstrating enormous awareness of where you are at mentally. When you say you are not ready to change, you are honoring your struggle and naming it instead of feeling guilty for not having willpower and dedication.

The Power of Saying You are not Ready to Change

There is a reason why you don’t want to change. What you don’t want to change is providing you with something that makes your life feel easier right now. This is a great time to ask yourself what habits you have installed in your life to relieve hard emotions that you might be feeling. Those hard emotions might be too much to struggle through right now.

There is a reason why you turn to Oreos, anger, bitterness, Netflix, or social media scrolling (fill in your personal blank). When you can admit that you are not ready to give up your thing, you can get curious about what that thing is giving you. What is that substance or habit doing for you? Is it buffering the stresses and pain in your life, so you don’t have to deal with it head-on?

Buffers For Stress and Pain

When we are overwhelmed or don’t know how to change something like a habit or pattern we have discomfort, maybe even pain. All of us will typically do something to take the edge off and buffer that pain, that discomfort. You might buffer by procrastinating when you are overwhelmed with a situation and don’t know where to start. You might buffer by withdrawing because you don’t know how to fix something. Or you might be like me where I buffer by never turning off when I am uncomfortable and just trying to see how hard I can push something or someone to get what I believe will decrease my discomfort.

Instead of buffering what is actually helpful is curious reflection without judgment. Why am I overwhelmed? Why am I uncomfortable? These might be easy to define, but what is less easy to define is why I feel my buffer is the solution. Just saying you need to stop using your buffer is not healthy. That buffer is shining a spotlight on a hard emotion that needs to be discussed, maybe with a counselor or by writing out your emotions and thoughts. I am frankly shocked at how much better I feel after I use my whiteboard to write out what is causing me to use my buffer and how I can address it.

Heart Change vs. Quick Change

Saying you don’t want to change allows you the conscious choice to focus on a heart change, your actual desire and motivation to change from the inside instead of a quick behavior change. When you feel guilt, shame, or fear, it will cause you to make a quick change to get out of those hard emotions. But it is not a real change because quick change motivation is not one that changes your heart.

Quick change is something most of us have tried. Quick change is where you try to willpower behavior changes. Those changes don’t last. Because we are human and imperfect willpower is going to break. If your heart doesn’t want to change you won’t get back on that horse again because it sucked, and you don’t feel that guilty anymore.

Honest character change takes curiosity and kindness to look at what we want and the buffers we are using to mask our discomfort or pain. You can’t quick fix or band-aid change because that discomfort or pain likely stems from a wound. You can’t put a bandaid on a wound that has been with you for years. Quick behavior change doesn’t work because that wound seeps through your willpower bandaid in no time flat. Heart change cleans out that wound, and cleaning the wound always hurts. But it is the good kind of hurt that leads to lasting healing.

The Crux: You Can’t Hurry Heart Change

Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch Christian who, along with her father and other family members, helped many Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II. She once was quoted as saying, “If the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy.” Many of us let ourselves get so busy that we feel overwhelmed when we think about taking the time to live emotionally healthy and vibrant lives. Lives where we understand that change is inevitable, but growth is optional.

Heart change requires slowing down. As you move through your day, pay attention to the sensations of hurry, stress, distraction, and irritation. When your heart is in a state of change you can eat at Chick-Fil-A today and slow down to acknowledge it didn’t destroy your journey for improving your eating. When your heart is in a state of change, you will reach for your buffer and then be still and get curious about why you feel like you need it right now. Perfection isn’t possible and isn’t the goal. A slip into your buffer doesn’t need to be a slide back into apathy for change. The best is yet to come when we can be honest when we don’t want to change so we can grow the heart needed for change to develop.

DIG Deep Action Steps

Get?Deliberate: Change is hard because most days don’t feel like an exclamation point or a cinematic ending. Most days feel like commas or… We need to find the joy between the commas and ellipses because heart change is fueled by good emotions, not guilt. If there is a secrete to happiness throughout lifestyle change, it’s presence in the moment. The more present we are to the now, the more grateful we are for what is, and the more we tap into that joy. Want to know how to get better at being present and joyful? Check out this post with the link below.

Get?Inspired: This post was inspired by an episode on the?Start From Joy?podcast. I am a total fangirl and am inspired by the hosts regularly while listening to their stuff.

Get?Going: I heard someone say this week to go ugly early because no one is watching when you start.?It made me smile because it is so true. The start of anything is ugly or at least not pretty. It won’t look good when we start. We will fail often, but if it is a heart change, we can create short, quiet moments at the end of the day to be present and joyful that we started.