The more we try to change, the more we stay the same
Hi friends, John here.
What would it be like to give yourself a break from the demands to change, to be better, smarter, fitter, richer, healthier, and happier?
For a moment, to just let the uninspired, overworked, over-it-all-fed-up-with-trying-to-change version of yourself hang out.
If you're sitting reading this, feel your butt in your chair; if you're standing, feel your feet on the ground.
Notice your breath, maybe your tiredness, the taste in your mouth. Notice the feeling behind your eyes as you read this.
Just be there and don’t do a goddamn thing to change yourself.
The Paradoxical Theory of Change
The paradoxical theory of change is at the core of Radical Honesty and it’s a key antidote to our accelerating culture’s call to endlessly make ourselves better.
The idea is that the more you try to change, the more you stay the same.
Another way to say that is, what you resist, persists.
Here’s how this counter-intuitive idea works:
When you don’t identify with parts of your lived experience, for example, your desire for rest, your anger, your excitement, or your shame about your body, inner conflict is created and you are less able to direct your own resources toward change.
In essence, the paradoxical theory of change is offering a model of change that places self-acceptance, rather than self-rejection, as the key to change and personal transformation.
Self-Rejection Vs. Self-Acceptance
Imagine how you feel when your efforts to change are based on self-rejection and when they are based on self-acceptance.
In the first case, self-rejection, shame, and “shoulds” organize your change efforts. Tension reigns in the body, a demand has to be fulfilled, a commitment is sworn. Struggle and overcoming are the key themes. This is the implicit message of much personal growth.
In the second, self-acceptance, noticing your actual lived experience and self-compassion are the touchstones. This may bring forth a feeling of warmth and openness in the chest, a sense of being called forth, and an excitement about developing your abilities. You accept that you are where you are and you’re ready for something new.
We take the path of self-rejection because we fear that the counterintuitive self-acceptance approach couldn’t possibly work. Our mind tells us that self-acceptance means reinforcing our dysfunction, that real change won't happen unless we punish ourselves and envision some other version of ourselves that we want to become.
But the necessary conditions for change may in fact be very different. They depend on first developing our capacities to notice our experience in the moment, to accept that those sensations, thoughts, and feelings are actually happening (even if they don't feel pleasurable), and that the self-rejection of those experiences compounds the problem of change.
The Personal Growth and Wellness Industries are Suspect
A whole industry of coaching, websites, and books sell us a thousand different plans to help us change. Most of them play on our self-rejection, marketing to the parts of ourselves that we disown while laying out a generalized plan to overcome them.
But their common denominator is the essence of their failure; they jump too quickly to “change”, orienting transformation into a step-by-step plan that skips over the most important part: the courage to notice and accept your here and now experience as the foundation for a new and different experience to emerge.
Which is understandable. Their creators play by the same rules we do: pretend about what we are actually experiencing, perform the song and dance that we have it all under control.
Radical Honesty and the paradoxical theory of change present an alternative: that lasting change appears to occur when we notice our experience moment by moment, tell the truth about our experience, and let change emerge from our self-acceptance rather than self-rejection.
And maybe, just maybe, you end up realizing, you’re actually more okay than you thought, at least as okay as the experts hawking their wares at the self-improvement bazaar.
Interested in practicing this counter-intuitive model of personal transformation?
Check out my upcoming Radical Honesty workshops below!
John Rosania is a co-founder of the Radical Honesty Institute and the former CEO of Radical Honesty Enterprises. He is a trauma-informed certified Radical Honesty trainer who leads online courses, weekends and 8-Day workshops around the United States. John offers individual and couples coaching through Honesty Lab.
Upcoming Workshops & Trainings led by John: