How Hard Is Change?

I’ve been talking about changing yourself quite a bit lately. It’s an essential step. Without it, you’ll never get the life you dream of. Or even find something you can dream about.

But there is one thing with change.

It can be hard.

Sometimes extremely hard.

Not necessarily because of the outer world but mostly it’s our own thinking.

A few years ago I heard a statement that stuck with me. I’ve been thinking about that, on and off, for a while now. Sharing it with others and listening to what they think about it.

Big change until up to the age of 25 is easy. Beyond that, it needs a massive disruption in one’s life.

I don’t remember where I heard it first and why exactly the age of 25 but I think there is some truth about it.

Change is still possible. It is always possible as our brain is capable of remodeling itself until we die.

But after some point, it seems to become harder for many of us.

Then the death of your partner, parents, friends, and family, losing your job, getting a heart attack, stroke, burnout, or some other out of the ordinary event gives us the push to change our direction in life.

To question your life choices so far and if you are truly happy with them.

And suddenly this questioning is over and you just start doing the new things despite of fear and anything else.

For me, this push was the death of my parents. Something that triggered the start of change and 1.5 years later a sucking situation at work did do the rest…

Now, I turned the semi-automatic living model off and took over the driver seat. I decide on the direction.

When you read this, it might sound easy, but it is not.

You’ve been living on earth for some years now. And everything you learned and used regularly is declared as survival-relevant by your brain. It helps you stay alive.

The sad part with this is, that your brain does not care if the situation is great or sucks. At some point, it is so accustomed to it, that it hates any change. Good or bad.

Especially big changes. They are a threat to the current survival strategy.

That’s the reason why people stay in unhealthy relationships, work situations, and more. It’s known and their brain still lives. So, that’s fine.

It can even go so far as with the Stockholm syndrome, where hostages suddenly like and sympathize with the captors.

Survival does not mean happiness or satisfaction.

So, if you want to be happy, you’d need to retrain your brain. And the older you are, the more you have to train it. There’s a ton of automatic behavior, habits, and routines that you need to break and rebuild.

A big event in life can give you the necessary trigger and push.

What’s pushing you?