141. change is hard

Change is hard. We approach the concept of positive change with good intentions, yet when we arrive at the crossroads of where we need to leave behind our old habits to implement new ones, we inevitably stumble. Whether we realize it or not, we hold onto more fear about losing what we have come to accept as ourselves — lifestyle and habits — than what we stand to gain by making the transition. If we know that implementing healthy and positive changes will be beneficial, then why is change so hard?

To answer this question we can look into the work of Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize for his research into cognitive biases — those little hardwired shortcuts in our brains that help speed up the decision-making process. While they’re helpful, they’re not always rational. An example of this is something called loss aversion. Rationally, gaining a dollar should be as pleasurable as losing a dollar is painful. However, our brains don’t work like that and a reason why change can be so difficult. Losing a dollar bothers you a lot more than earning a dollar makes you feel good. It makes sense because losing too much can equate to you having to live in a box and evolutionarily if you lost everything that meant death, while gaining a lot is nice but its appeal quickly diminishes (due to the hedonic treadmill). So it seems that evolution has wired us to fear losses much more than we love gains.

In other words, losses loom larger than gains. Change is so hard because we have to lose a piece of ourselves in the process. We are loss averse.