Change is Hard

Last year, I had the opportunity to design and deliver a Harnessing the Unconscious: Leadership Development Program, a six-month series of workshops and coaching for South Asian women in Canada. The program was a great success, and Core Allies LLC, was chosen to lead the project because of its understanding of the connection between change and the unconscious.

One of the program’s workshops concentrated on exploring the unconscious barriers to success and lasting change. Recognizing and managing this connection is a key aspect of all my work, and when I was preparing for the workshop I realized that although I have touched on this subject in previous posts, I’ve never explored the subject in depth in these newsletters.

So, over the next few newsletters, I am going to be talking about what I have learned from my years of practice and study about how the unconscious can prevent lasting change, and what can be done about it. I’m going to start in this one by exploring what is meant by the unconscious, and how it can cause us to self-sabotage desired changes.

Our minds do a really good job of convincing us that we, our conscious selves, are in control. That intentions start with our thoughts, and that our actions follow decisions we have made deliberately. But increasingly, both psychology and neurology have shown that this apparent control is largely an illusion. This separation of thoughts and actions is clearest at the level of basic, autonomic bodily functions. Without our thinking about it, our heart beats, our stomach digests, and our skin sweats. Breathing is a function we can control consciously, but it goes on even when we aren’t thinking about it. 

But it is not just at this basic, physical level that actions are separate from conscious thoughts. Psychologists have found numerous ways that our apparently free decisions are influenced by factors we aren’t consciously aware of. And neurologists, by carefully mapping and timing nerve signals to and from the brain, have discovered that our bodies often start reacting to a stimulus before the brain has had a chance to learn about it and formulate a response. What is amazing is that, retroactively, it’s not unusual for us to perceive the response as being due to a conscious decision. We love narrative, and fit our experiences into patterns that make sense to us.

When we have difficulty making beneficial changes, such as keeping New Year resolutions, getting more exercise, or procrastinating less at work, we often blame ourselves for the failure. We decide that we weren’t motivated enough, or didn’t work hard enough. I believe, however, that failure to change is rarely due to some shortcoming on our part. There is nothing wrong with us. Instead, this inability to change comes from obstacles and roadblocks thrown up by our unconscious.

There is nothing wrong with us.

Instead, this inability to change comes from obstacles and roadblocks thrown up by our unconscious.

Many of our unconscious patterns and beliefs were developed for good reasons, and served a purpose when they first became ingrained in us. But because we aren’t conscious of them, it is difficult to make them adapt to changing circumstances, even when they no longer serve a purpose, or are even harming us. This leads to self-sabotage, where our unconscious throws up barriers and roadblocks to our conscious desire to change.

In future newsletters, I will talk more about how the unconscious sabotages change, how you can access your unconscious, and how doing so will help you make lasting changes.