Anybody who has ever tried to make a significant change in their life (in other words, pretty much everyone) knows how hard it is. Old ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving, no matter how unhealthy they are or unhappy they make you, can become so deeply entrenched in our psyches that positive change seems nearly impossible. But it isn’t.
A mistake that many people make is that they tend to focus inward to find ways to change. But I have found that you can be absolutely determined to make a change in your life and have the intrinsic tools to make those changes (e.g., positive attitude, focus, resilience to setbacks), but can’t do so because your external world either doesn’t encourage the change or actively undercuts your efforts. Yes, the internal scaffolding for change must be present because the desire to change begins inside. But without external support, change is virtually impossible. These external influences can include how you structure your daily life, the people you surround yourself with, and the messages you receive from our popular culture.
Your Life
From an evolutionary perspective, there are three feelings that humans don’t like to experience: unfamiliarity, unpredictability, and lack of control. These feelings are very uncomfortable, but they had survival value for primitive humans; when we felt them, death was likely to follow, so we did everything we could to maintain familiarity, predictability, and control in our lives.
Yet, change, even if it is positive, can still produce these decidedly uncomfortable feelings, which is one reason why so many people would rather be miserable than risk changing their lives. They may be really unhappy, but their unhappiness is familiar, predictable, and, in an odd sort of way, within their control (because they cause their unhappiness in very specific ways). But if they tried to change, they are entering territory that is decidedly unfamiliar, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. As the saying goes, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.”
And there is nothing more familiar, predictable, and controllable than the life you have created for yourself (even if it makes you unhappy). The routines, habits, patterns, and rhythms of your life, comprised of what eat, how long you sleep, the activities that you engage in, and your routes to and from frequent destinations, are the framework that supports how you think, your emotions, how you act and react to the world, and how you interact with and respond to those around you. So, if you want to change some aspect of your life, you will need to change the structures that support your life.
You can begin by identifying your current life structures that support whatever unhealthy parts of your life that you want to change. Then, with a clear understanding of the changes you want to make, you can identify new structures that can replace the old ones. For example, if you want to eat more healthily, you could change your route to work that passes your local coffee shop with the delicious pastries. If you want to exercise regularly, instead of going directly home with the plan of then going to your gym, pack your gym bag the night before, bring it to work, and then go directly to the gym after work.
Your People
The people you spend time with can have either a negative or positive impact on your capacity to foster life change. First, we surround ourselves with people who support and encourage our current life, however unhealthy it might be. If you have a drinking problem, you likely hang out with people who drink. If you’re sedentary, you probably spend time with people who are similarly inactive. If you suggested abstaining or getting some exercise, respectively, you would likely be, at a minimum, shut down on the spot and, at a maximum, ridiculed and shamed. It’s basically impossible to enact change when your social world is driven to keep you as you are, for both social reasons (they like you and want to continue to do things together) and personal ego-protection (when you intimate that you are living an unhealthy life, you are implicitly suggesting that they are too).
These pressures are especially acute with family members. There is often a longer history of unhealthiness in a family, your family may be why you are who you are, and you may feel obligated to not rock your family’s boat because you love them, and your positive changes make cause discomfort and conflict.
So, as difficult and sad as it may be, if you are really determined to make positive changes, you may need to change the people in your life. You many need to distance yourself from unhealthy family members and find new friends. That distancing from people whom you care about and who care about you is certainly not a road you should go down if you can avoid it. Yet, if you are truly committed to changing your life for the better, it might be a choice you have to make.
But, before you delete your current contact list and spurn everyone in your life (no doubt a truly painful and unsettling step to take), you should first try to enlist them in your life change. It may be that they too have wanted to make changes in their life but weren’t able to on their own. Or they may recognize your present unhealthy situation and care so much about you that they are willing to put your needs ahead of their own and support your efforts.
It’s usually pretty easy to identify those people in your life who are “enablers” of your unhealthy life. You should also look for those who tacitly approve of it, ignore it, or don’t help you when needed. Removing the social obstacles is an important first step in making positive life changes because it eliminates some of the friction that can slow or halt your efforts.
The next step is to replenish your social life with people who will actively support your efforts at a healthier life and even who are on the same journey as you are and are willing to share the road to health and happiness with you. Support groups that address your particular life challenges, such as AA and Al Anon, are a wonderful way to seed your social world with positive influences, particularly because their members know exactly what you are going through and can offer you both emotional and practical support. Religious groups, sport and exercise clubs, book groups, and other organizations that foster your efforts, not only make change easier because you feel supported and share many tools that can make change easier, but also introduce you to like-minded people with whom you can establish new friends and create new and positive social opportunities.
Your Culture
We are very much products of the culture in which we live. How we think, feel, and behave are heavily influenced by the messages we get from the concentric circles of culture in which we are immersed. When most of us think about those influences, we tend to focus on more proximal forces such as family, friends, co-workers, and community. But the broader popular culture can be equally as impactful on us, particularly with the rise of the internet, 24/7 connectivity, and the seemingly limitless sources of messages that we are exposed to every day. And, sadly, many of those messages from our popular culture, delivered through social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok, can be unhealthy and downright toxic.
The added problem is that we tend to gravitate toward messages that affirm our pre-existing beliefs. What this means is that you are probably receiving messages through your social media that encourage, rather than dissuade, who you currently are and your unhealthy life. If you are constantly bombarded by messages telling you that your present unhealthy state is okay, then it will be extremely difficult to resist those messages and make the changes you want to make.
So, to make positive changes in yourself and your life, you need to remove the enabling messages and start receiving messages that inspire and support those positive changes. You can delete apps and unsubscribe or opt out of groups, blogs, newsletters, chats, or other forums that feed your unhealthiness. You can then search for and subscribe to other forums that send supportive messages that will promote the positive changes
When you combine your internal determination to change your life with an external world that supports your efforts, you can create a momentum that will help you resist the forces of old, unhealthy habits and change your life for the better and for good.
