Why Do We Fight Change?

And what can we do about it?

Photo by Håkon Grimstad on Unsplash

A few days ago, I purchased the book The 12 Week Year by Brian P Moran and Michael Lennington which demonstrates how you can achieve more in twelve weeks than most people do in a year. To understand how we can change our behavior from a twelve-month year to a twelve-week year, we first need to realize why we fight that change and what needs to be in place to overcome our resistance to that change.

So much of our decision-making regarding change involves our emotions and it is our emotions that are resistant to change.

In the book, the writers write about a paper called “The Emotional Cycle of Change”, written by Don Kelley and Daryl Connor. The paper explains that change can be described as having five distinct emotional phases. The writers of the paper contend that no matter what change you want to make, you will go through these five phases. These changes are 1. Uninformed optimism 2. Informed Pessimism, 3. Valley of Despair 4. Informed Optimism 5. Success and Fulfillment.

Phase One: Uninformed Optimism

Back when I wanted to start writing in Medium, I remember how excited I was to be starting it. I didn’t know how to start my journey here. I just knew that I wanted to. That’s the first phase of change called uninformed optimism. I didn’t know, but I imagined the best…