Change is only scary because it involves confronting, and killing off, the old you

Getting behind the steering wheel for the first time is scary because you'll be killing off the version of you that didn't know how to drive, posting your profile picture is scary because you'll be killing off the version of you that didn't put yourself out there, and living your life on your terms is scary because you'll be confronting the version of you that was told how to live your life and that you'd be chastised, punished, and/or judged for doing so.

Change—even if for the better—is going to feel difficult and be met with resistance since you'll be killing off a set of previously held beliefs, attitudes, perspectives, and habits, for which you may have been holding onto for most, if not all, of your life and swapping them out in favour of new ones which (hopefully) reflect more of the person you want to be.

The longer you have held these things and the longer they have been a part of how you go about life, the more painful change will be.

Now that we've established why we might find ourselves reluctant to change, we can begin to explore methods that will not only help us fight the feelings of resistance, but also make the necessary changes in order to improve our lives.

First things first, we need to be aware of the areas of our life in which we would like to change.

As mentioned earlier, we may have been holding onto our unhealthy belief systems for most, if not all, of our lives. Because of this, it's not uncommon to notice that identifying the changes needed can be hard to spot due to these belief systems being heavily ingrained into our paradigms.

A simple way I've found to tackle this was by first identifying, and then listing out all of the unwanted results I was currently getting in life.

Once you have you have your list, you can began to go through each unwanted result and work backwards in order to get to the actions and unhealthy belief systems for which the unwanted results have stemmed from. This is because whatever we believe affects our actions, and then our actions affect our results (Beliefs > Actions > Results).

Getting in touch with the beliefs and actions causing my unwanted results made it immediately obvious as to what changes I needed to make in order to prevent these results from reoccurring.

In the same way that the method described above can help us reveal the things we need to stop doing, it can also be used to get in touch with what we need to start doing by repeating the above exercise except this time placing our focus on the results that we do want, but don't currently have.

What's been good about using this method is it makes it obvious as to what changes are necessary and most pressing, whilst also preventing any time and energy being exerted on things that don't need to be changed. This ensures that you are making changes in the right areas whilst leaving unproblematic ones alone.

Here's a (potentially) dangerous part that I feel is worth mentioning. All change is painful however, not all change is good. Recently I was incredibly ill and off work for 2 weeks. This meant I couldn't partake in the good habits I had formed over the past year such as reading, working out, meditating, self reflection, etc and was instead laying in bed watching YouTube videos, listening to music and all-round doing nothing productive. Naturally I cut myself some slack due to how ill I was but regardless, that didn't change the fact that I was becoming my old self again by indulging in my old, and unhealthy habits.

As I was getting better and able to reflect upon this, I realised that even though I was changing for the worse, it was still just as painful as changing for the better. Since change hurts regardless, this means that we have to choose our pain. Better then to choose the pain of becoming your best self.

Change—good or bad—hurts, however the worst pain of all is to remain the same.