Is your life easy now?
Have you ever heard the phrase, the Devil you know is better than the Devil you don't?
Essentially, it means that you're more comfortable with the situation you know than with change.
(when I say 'you', what I mean is 'the entire human race')
What you know is what you understand, what you can predict; it may not be perfect and you might not be happy, but it's familiar and you can see things coming. Change requires just that: change. Suddenly the world becomes unfamiliar and unpredictable. You can't see things coming, you don't know what will happen in the future.
The change could be the best thing that has ever happened to you... OR it could be a thousand times worse than the Devil you knew before...
Now, when I think about this I automatically think of huge changes, even though I know exactly where I'm going to take this train of thought. That should tell you how prone to assumptions the human brain is and how quickly we go to the extreme ends of the spectrum. This principle obviously applies to big changes, as they're the ones bound to alter your life in unexpected ways (e.g. having a baby, moving overseas, changing jobs, etc). However, it also applies to smaller changes; little everyday differences we could make to our lives.
So often I am asked questions like, What do I do? How can I be happier? What's the secret?
There is no secret. There are people out there who have cracked the code and the information is out there - in books, in movies, with therapists, even those articles you'll find on Facebook ("10 ways to make your life better"). It's just that the 'secret' requires change, and change is scary, because change is unpredictable - we enjoy our current Devil because it's easier in the moment to follow the path of least resistance; to give in to what we know instead of risking following a new Devil.
Let's take the little things we can all do to make our lives better: a glass of water in the morning, a consistent bedtime, exercise for 30 minutes a day, remove alcohol or cigarettes, eat more vegetables, etc... These are things that have been shown to improve mood, energy levels, skin, hormonal imbalances, and have a host of knock-on positive effects. They're also simple; it takes a bit of rearranging, but you can probably manage one or two of those without too much sacrifice. But we don't know what life will be like if we do these things - we have been told it will be better, but because of the sacrifice it could be worse... We won't be going out drinking with our friends, we may have to get up an hour earlier to fit exercise in, and we really hate broccoli.
(Yep, that's me. Broccoli is my Devil)
So, even though you may not be happy now, these small Devils provoke anxiety because we don't know if life will get worse or if there will be unforeseen consequences. The truth is, if it does get worse, you can always ditch the change and revert back, but we don't think like that because of the tendency to dive right to the extreme and treat these small changes as like we do big, irreversible changes.
The other issue that arises is that pesky fear of failure - if you try something new, you could fail, and if you fail, it affects your identity, self-worth, self-belief, social standing, etc. Even if the Devil you know isn't making you happy, it is still 'safe' and 'comfortable' in the sense that you aren't risking failure because you know the outcome - you have predictability. If we choose to make a change, even a small one, we are putting ourselves out there and holding ourselves accountable to a new standard, the outcome of which we cannot predict.
We often complain that change is 'too' hard, but that's so broad... Let's consider what part of change is hard. Most of the time, you know what to do, but actually doing it is hard because you've got to follow a Devil you don't know. The answer for how to do that is courage and bravery. It's been said before and, unfortunately, that doesn't make it any easier to enact.
What might be worth considering is whether your life, this Devil, is easy now. Is that predictability worth it? What consequences are you currently putting up with to keep following the Devil you know? What little sacrifices can you make to your current life to test out a new Devil? I'd make a bet that change is probably not harder than what you're doing right now - especially a small change to some choices.
On a final note, we can also see the fear of change in the way we speak about it: "I can't" or "that's too hard". These statements are so broad, and so final, but they don't really address the core issue. We can change our internal narrative around change by trying something like "I'm scared of things being unpredictable if I change" when we're confronted with an opportunity. This hits the nail on the head: the action itself may not be difficult to enact, but the fear of following a new Devil is what's holding us back!
(I did not mean for that to rhyme, it was a happy coincidence and I'm leaving it!)
Essentially, it means that you're more comfortable with the situation you know than with change.
(when I say 'you', what I mean is 'the entire human race')
What you know is what you understand, what you can predict; it may not be perfect and you might not be happy, but it's familiar and you can see things coming. Change requires just that: change. Suddenly the world becomes unfamiliar and unpredictable. You can't see things coming, you don't know what will happen in the future.
The change could be the best thing that has ever happened to you... OR it could be a thousand times worse than the Devil you knew before...
Now, when I think about this I automatically think of huge changes, even though I know exactly where I'm going to take this train of thought. That should tell you how prone to assumptions the human brain is and how quickly we go to the extreme ends of the spectrum. This principle obviously applies to big changes, as they're the ones bound to alter your life in unexpected ways (e.g. having a baby, moving overseas, changing jobs, etc). However, it also applies to smaller changes; little everyday differences we could make to our lives.
So often I am asked questions like, What do I do? How can I be happier? What's the secret?
There is no secret. There are people out there who have cracked the code and the information is out there - in books, in movies, with therapists, even those articles you'll find on Facebook ("10 ways to make your life better"). It's just that the 'secret' requires change, and change is scary, because change is unpredictable - we enjoy our current Devil because it's easier in the moment to follow the path of least resistance; to give in to what we know instead of risking following a new Devil.
Let's take the little things we can all do to make our lives better: a glass of water in the morning, a consistent bedtime, exercise for 30 minutes a day, remove alcohol or cigarettes, eat more vegetables, etc... These are things that have been shown to improve mood, energy levels, skin, hormonal imbalances, and have a host of knock-on positive effects. They're also simple; it takes a bit of rearranging, but you can probably manage one or two of those without too much sacrifice. But we don't know what life will be like if we do these things - we have been told it will be better, but because of the sacrifice it could be worse... We won't be going out drinking with our friends, we may have to get up an hour earlier to fit exercise in, and we really hate broccoli.
(Yep, that's me. Broccoli is my Devil)
So, even though you may not be happy now, these small Devils provoke anxiety because we don't know if life will get worse or if there will be unforeseen consequences. The truth is, if it does get worse, you can always ditch the change and revert back, but we don't think like that because of the tendency to dive right to the extreme and treat these small changes as like we do big, irreversible changes.
The other issue that arises is that pesky fear of failure - if you try something new, you could fail, and if you fail, it affects your identity, self-worth, self-belief, social standing, etc. Even if the Devil you know isn't making you happy, it is still 'safe' and 'comfortable' in the sense that you aren't risking failure because you know the outcome - you have predictability. If we choose to make a change, even a small one, we are putting ourselves out there and holding ourselves accountable to a new standard, the outcome of which we cannot predict.
We often complain that change is 'too' hard, but that's so broad... Let's consider what part of change is hard. Most of the time, you know what to do, but actually doing it is hard because you've got to follow a Devil you don't know. The answer for how to do that is courage and bravery. It's been said before and, unfortunately, that doesn't make it any easier to enact.
What might be worth considering is whether your life, this Devil, is easy now. Is that predictability worth it? What consequences are you currently putting up with to keep following the Devil you know? What little sacrifices can you make to your current life to test out a new Devil? I'd make a bet that change is probably not harder than what you're doing right now - especially a small change to some choices.
On a final note, we can also see the fear of change in the way we speak about it: "I can't" or "that's too hard". These statements are so broad, and so final, but they don't really address the core issue. We can change our internal narrative around change by trying something like "I'm scared of things being unpredictable if I change" when we're confronted with an opportunity. This hits the nail on the head: the action itself may not be difficult to enact, but the fear of following a new Devil is what's holding us back!
(I did not mean for that to rhyme, it was a happy coincidence and I'm leaving it!)
Sophie Gray
sophie.gray@thinkgray.com
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