I hear the phrase “People Don’t Change” a lot, especially from the scientific and medical communities.
I’m just back from a conference focused on scientific studies about change. I’ll acknowledge there are studies that show most patients who encounter life threatening conditions return to old behaviors that caused the problem in the first place. Hence, red meat eventually seduces the heart patient. Nicotine lures the smoker. Weight comes back to the dieter.
I know some people don’t care to change, or it is too threatening to them to do so. Yes, living without food as a soother, friend or emotional barrier can be scarier than death.
But the problem with the general belief that “people don’t change” is: it’s just that – general.
And it’s not necessarily forever.
I fit that picture of “life-threatened-but-not-changing” once.
I developed hypoglycemia, a precursor to diabetes, in my twenties, and because I had no health insurance, I ignored the symptoms until they became severe: fainting, nausea, terrible headaches, blackouts, and finally seizures. Then, all alone in my apartment, I seized and passed out one night. I remember trying to get into my bedroom, and reached for the doorframe. I must have hit it with my face as I fell because, when I awoke, the frame was smeared with blood and I had been bleeding. The side of my face was badly scraped and cut.
My doctor went for the fear jugular: You live alone in New York City. You were passed out bleeding for hours. What if the bleeding had been worse? You could have died. YOU MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR WEIGHT!!!
And I did do something. I did exactly what he said – an extreme diet – until I began to get healthier, my blood sugar numbers evened out, and the fear eased. Then, my big brain took over and convinced me I was cured and I was out of diet-world faster than greased lightning.
But the point is this: I didn’t stay in that “afraid to change” place forever. I didn’t continue to lose weight and regain it.
My motivation didn’t come from fear. It came from want. It came from desire.
It didn’t come from a doctor or “authority.” It came from inside me. (This is why I coach; coaching works with a client’s deeper, inner desires and values – where real motivation is born and sustained.)
I didn’t stay a failure statistic, neatly described in column 3 of some dry data, devoid of the very desire that makes change happen.
Human beings love to change. They think about it, dream about it, lust for it.
Why?
Change is what makes us human. No other living being can deliberately change. It’s enormously exciting to actually witness deep change inside ourselves. It hooks us into our aliveness and sparks vitality.
No, I didn’t stay a statistic. And you don’t have to either.
