Before you read on, take a moment and ask yourself,

Would you change your set ways for someone or something?

What happens when someone takes over a task you have previously done before and does it differently than what you did? Does it bother you? Does it frustrate you? Does it compel you to find minute flaws and blow them out of proportion? Or does it make you bicker about small differences in their ways and yours?

How about what happens when someone does any task in a different way, but in a better way than you did? Does it enrage you?

Recently while hosting and spearheading event I came to experience the same. People who had hosted/conducted similar events before were quite resistant to the new process ushered in by us, a process which has had a positive impact, and as a result, there was quite a bit of friction.

That got me thinking, why are people so resistant to change? Is it just the fear of venturing into the unknown? Or is it something deeper?

Side note: If any of you are reading this, I am thankful for your challenges, it made me streamline my process. I am in no way playing the blame game or calling you out with this post.

Moving on, I came up with a few reasons and seemed to satiate my curiosity.

1. As stated before, Fear of the Unknown.
2. Inability to let go of their comfort zone.
3. Inability to admit that someone or something might be better than them, or any other process might work just as well as your own process.
4. Effectiveness: Skills/ Change

These reasons or brain light bulbs if you will, stated above, are just some of the many that came to me. These are the handful ones which I think have the largest contributing factor in resistance to change.

Let us explore them one by one, shall we? Just keep in mind, some of these may not apply to some of you, but after reading you can for sure identify someone around you, practicing the below “rituals”.

• Fear of the Unknown.
  • When something changes, what comes ahead, is the unknown. People fear things which they don’t understand. People fear what they don’t know. In the corporate world, when you transition from one software/ methodology into another, it can become quite scary.
  • Even in personal life, when you get out of a very long term relationship, sometimes for some people, it is quite overwhelming being single after ages. This often unknowingly culminates into Rebound Relationships and meaningless hookups.
  • In short, changing your entire modus operandi can seem like a scary daunting behemoth of a task. But the thing to remember is that the task is only scary because you are looking at it without any prep, without any prior knowledge. It is exactly like the Elementals from the latest Spider-Man movie. (Spoiler Alert). It seems scary and monstrous from the outside, but looking from inside out, it is nothing but a illusion created by ignorance and lack of knowledge.
  • Back from the above detour, being afraid of the unknown is the most common albeit overlooked cause. No one thinks about this reason as the primary cause, except in some special cases.

• Hibernating in the comfort zone.
  • When you’ve been doing something for quite some time, you tend to get quite comfortable doing it. And when we get comfortable, we eventually and usually lose our edge. We lose the spark that brought is here in the first place. The spark, the drive to do something new, is lost.
  • Plus as we get so used to the ways of doing things, when change is ushered in, it is quite startling. When we are used to the state of comfort, we are quite hesitant to adopt the new way and adapt to the new format/ situation/ environment.
  • Furthermore, when something (the change) threatens this comfort, we tend to panic. We tend to lash out at the thing, situation or the person bringing about the said change.
  • Always remember, you are where you are because your life changed from what it initially was. You got to the place where you are through change. There’s nothing wrong with being comfortable with the current status quo, but always keep your learning edge sharp. It’ll help when the change is imminent.

• Ego
  • Inability to admit that they are not the apex predator in the field anymore. Inability to admit that someone, someone new just might be better than them. This is commonly loosely translated as Ego.
  • This might stem from an underlying superiority complex, which in fact is developed in turn to mask the inferiority complex, mask the insecurities.
  • Although, sometimes this might be coming from a place of goodwill, sometimes, and more often than not, it does come off as interference. Sure, the person who was involved before might have more experience, but it doesn’t change the fact just as they had some good ideas back in the day which made them successful in managing those events, someone else might be on the same track and have similar or even more brilliant ideas.
    • This leads me to a sub-point in this. Influence. Some people are used to boss people around. This might be a direct order, or it might not. It might be just the power of influence. Influencing other people so that they do things in a way which is conducive to us.
    • Don’t get me wrong, I know that there is nothing wrong with helping other individuals to do things the right way, but what people seem to forget that once you pass on the torch to someone else, you give up the right to change or influence their future actions unless they explicitly ask you for your input/help. Because then, it comes off as interference rather than helpful guidance.
  • But remember, sometimes it might be healthy to consider their opinion and sometimes mutate your current way to incorporate some part of their process into yours. 

• Effectiveness
  • Skills are not acquired in a short while, they are hard-earned and it’s quite natural to be anxious/afraid when these skills go “out of style”. It is perfectly natural to be resistant to change when you have to forego of your current skills and be back to square one.
  • However, in cases like this, it is quite necessary to adapt, because if you’re adamant about sticking to your current process and the world moves to on to a different one, then you might end up like Kodak.
  • The second part of this is sometimes we are unable to see or predict the effectiveness of the said change. As a result, we remain pretty much ignorant of the change. This can have some pretty adverse effects. While the world is training itself to adapt to the impending change, we are staying in our comfort zone, ignoring the change.
  • We can go into full-on denial mode about the change, and that is pretty hard to get out off. It can be quite hard to let go of the doubt, let go of ignorance, let go of the current mindset, and accept that the change can be a good thing. Sometimes it can be healthy to accept:
    

    Change is envitable.

  • In addition all of the above, sometimes, and even if it might sound bizarre at first, but stick with me, it does happen that we are resistant to change because we are not aware of our own potential. Let that sink in. Think about it, and feel free to comment your thoughts down below.

The baseline of all of this is, People Don’t Change. Alright, maybe they do. But they only do so under a specific circumstance. Let’s change the above statement to, People Don’t Change Voluntarily.

People only change when Change, it is the only option.

The thing to remember is that once you start actually practicing the newly born process, things start to become less Annabelle like and become more like Casper
(very bad metaphor, I know).

Don’t go cold turkey on your previous process and jump onto the new one, instead gradually reduce it from 100-0 to 90-10 to 80-20 ratios and so on. And don’t give up when things get too hard. Consider the hardships as a hard cacoon before you soar into the skies as a butterfly.

Give it a whirl, it will be alright.

PS: I’ve dropped subtle hints to those who are bringing about the change. If you’re one of them you’ll find it easy to spot.

Cheers!