I want to change but I can not ...

A good many of the people that I have helped during my professional experience had a demand: "I want to change, but I can not". Or at least that's what they said, that was their manifest problem, because the truth is that most of us are emotionally intelligent enough to know when a change is essential and how to carry it out only ... many times we lack the psychological tools to face change.

So, let's get down to work, let's send the "change" to the couch to psychoanalyze it.

Change, but what is change?

Change, true change, is a difficult task. We can vary our haircut, our style of dress, we can sign up in the gym ... we can even end a bad relationship ... but these changes are only superficial. There are deeper transformations that involve varying our way of thinking and understanding the world and even the way in which we perceive ourselves.

Then the change becomes painful. Why? Simply because when we face the idea of ​​change, we are also facing the need to change something that we assume that characterizes us, something that is part of our "I". As a result, we often assume the need for change as an attack on our identity.

Anatole France masterfully synthesized this idea: "all changes, even those that have most delayed in time, have their share of melancholy derived from what we leave behind and is a part of ourselves." We must die in a life before entering in the other. "

Ending a relationship, for example, not only implies that we must divest ourselves of the habits created between the two and learn to deal with the emotional vacuum; it also means that, in a certain way, we have made a mistake, we have erred somewhere along the way. Accepting this reality is often difficult because it requires understanding the situation from different perspectives, it means abandoning our role as victims and taking control of our lives.

Thus expressed, many might think that it is wonderful to take control of our lives and, certainly, it is but ... it also comes with its respective share of fear. When we do not have anyone to blame, the fear of making mistakes appears and many times we feel that our shoulders bend before a responsibility to which we were not accustomed.

Change implies learning and almost in addition, making new mistakes. When we change something we need to learn a new way of facing the situation and in many cases the learning indicates falls, errors and their respective quota of effort. Many people feel dread of the idea of ​​changing something in their lives because they do not know how to face a new learning and fear making mistakes. Then they prefer that things continue as they are, they are enclosed in the saying: "Better a bad known than a good to know." There really is no more immovable idea than this one.

Let's look at a small but very illustrative experiment:

Some college students were shown a jug full of coffee and asked how much they would pay for it. The average was 2 dollars.

The other half of the students were given the same jug with coffee, only this time the researchers told them they could keep the jar as a gift. Just a minute later, the experimenters asked the young people how much they would be willing to pay for that jug. The average price was 8 dollars.

What changed? The second group was proposing a change. They felt that the jar was theirs and, therefore, they were willing to pay more to not change that status. They resisted change in the same way that we resist the possibility of varying the slightest habit, habit, way of thinking or facing problems.

But all is not lost, although true change needs a new mental framework of openness to the uncertain and acceptance and taking responsibility for possible errors; The skills necessary to face life from a flexible attitude and open to variations can develop.

Let's end then with a phrase from Einstein: "if you want things to change, do not always do them in the same way". Therefore, if you really want to change, there is an idea that you must get rid of: "I want to change but I can not