Who Knew Trying to Change Could Be So Exhausting?

Have you ever gotten tired of trying to change the same thing?

Maybe it’s moving your body, changing how you eat, putting down the phone, changing how you spend money, responding differently in a relationship, or letting go of something you keep returning to.

The specifics may be different, but many of us know the conversation:

Today I’m going to do it differently.

And then the moment comes.

The discomfort. The urge. The negotiation.

You said today would be different.

I know.

So do something different.

Sometimes we do.

And sometimes whatever we usually do offers something we need more in that moment.

Maybe it’s relief. Comfort. Safety. Avoidance. A sense of control. Or simply not having to deal with something right now.

And suddenly the choice isn’t as simple as Do I want to change or not?

It can become:

Do I want what I said I wanted later—or do I need what the familiar response is giving me right now?

Sometimes we choose differently.

Sometimes the familiar response wins.

And then we get another chance to have the same conversation tomorrow.

And the next day.

And the next.

Who knew trying to change could be so exhausting?

We hear a lot about motivation, discipline and willpower. So when we continue doing something we genuinely want to change, it can be easy to make the struggle mean something about us.

Maybe I’m not trying hard enough.

Maybe I don’t want it badly enough.

Maybe other people are just stronger than I am.

But maybe there’s something else worth considering.

What if we’re tired?

Not as an excuse.

And certainly not as the explanation for every time change is difficult.

But as something we rarely seem to account for when we’re judging ourselves for being back in the same place again.

Because we’re not always just trying to change a behavior.

Sometimes we’re repeatedly being asked to stay with the very thing our familiar response helped us get away from.

The uncomfortable feeling.

The stress.

The uncertainty.

The urge.

Maybe the fear of saying what we really think.

The discomfort of doing something differently with someone we care about.

Whatever it is, we may have to experience it without immediately returning to the response that has reliably given us something we needed.

Once would be hard enough.

But change can ask us to do it over and over again.

Maybe that repeated effort takes more out of us than we realize.

And perhaps that gives us a different place to begin when we hear ourselves saying:

Why am I doing this again?

Instead of immediately turning that question against ourselves, maybe we can get curious:

What is making this choice so hard for me right now?

Not What’s wrong with me?

Not Why can’t I just do what I said I would do?

But what is happening right now that makes the familiar response feel so hard to resist?

Am I tired? Overwhelmed? Lonely? Angry? Anxious? Am I looking for comfort, distraction, escape, connection, safety, control—or simply a break?

Maybe there isn’t always a deep answer. Sometimes we may just be depleted, or the old response is so practiced that we find ourselves reaching for it before we’ve given much thought to anything else.

The question isn’t meant to give us one more thing to figure out. It’s simply a different place to look.

And noticing it doesn’t guarantee that we’ll make a different choice.

But perhaps it changes the conversation from a battle with ourselves into an attempt to understand what is actually happening.

Because one time when the familiar response wins doesn’t erase every time we chose differently.

And struggling to change something doesn’t necessarily tell us how much we want the change.

Sometimes it may simply tell us:

This is asking more of me than I realized.

And maybe understanding that leaves us with a little more energy for the next time we’re asked to choose again.

Messy. Bumpy. Possible. - Leigh