Do Not Trust Your Intuition On This One – Why Behavioral Change Must Feel Weird
- Brainz Magazine
- Nov 11, 2024
- 4 min read
Rike Küpper and Valentin Thoben founded Kairos in Company to uplift their clients mental health and personal growth. They provide mind-shift coaching and physical therapy by combining cutting-edge interventions and individual psychological support. Embracing Neurodiversity, recognizing the special needs in women's health.
Nowadays, we are actively trying to listen to our intuition, practicing to give our precious gut feelings more room. Which, in general, is very helpful for our well-being. Unfortunately, it can massively hinder us when it comes to changing our behaviour.
Why discomfort is necessary for change
Trying out new things can make us feel uncomfortable. Adaption to change needs resources and can be overwhelming. In this case, we tend to look for the known feelings to feel safe again. Even if it is a "known evil" and you therefore decided to change a certain aspect in your life.
Here is an example:
If you are used to being stressed during the day and even at night for decades, with a high heart rate and running on high levels of cortisol (which is not uncommon, btw!), it can feel very uncomfortable to calm down, do less, and allow yourself more rest.
If you successfully slow down, feelings of hopelessness, sadness, frustration, or strong cravings for stimulation in the form of distractions or substances are likely to occur.
You could even feel you lose control over your life, that this calmer life is not the right one for you. Most likely, you told yourself for many years that being this busy is necessary and will get you achievements. And it probably did! But this won’t go on forever; you will run out of energy or suffer through other side effects of this overdrive sooner or later. And you felt this already, which made you consider changing your lifestyle.
The easiest thing to do at this stage of your change process is to forget why you wanted to work on this aspect of your life in the first place and fall back into old patterns. The discomfort would be gone in a second. Feeling "normal" again will seem to be the right thing to do. Your gut tells you you are on the wrong track. But this is not true and will send you into a vicious circle of trial, discomfort and regression!
How to tackle the discomfort
So, how can you use this knowledge to improve your chances for success when you decide to start a change process?
1. Set yourself a time limit
By sticking to a realistic timeframe, you give the new behaviour a chance. Stay on your path no matter how weird you feel! Over time, you will get used to the new circumstances and can then finally feel the positive outcomes.
2. Realistic expectations
You already know it: lasting change takes time. So be true about the conditions you are dealing with and ask yourself these questions:
How long have I been using the old behavior"?
How deeply ingrained is it in my personality, my picture of myself? Which stories or beliefs do I tell myself that are strengthening this particular behavior?
How big is the change I am aiming for?
The longer you know it and the stronger the behavior is ingrained, the more time you will have to plan to successfully change it!
We recommend a minimum of work on an easy change for 21 days. So big changes can take you months up to years.
3. Break your goal down
If you discovered in step 2 you got a "big one" you want to tackle, break it down into some smaller packages, think baby steps or project management: You have a big end goal but to work on it you group your tasks into smaller packages including milestones you want to reach.
4. Identify competing motives
We often carry several beliefs about a behavior that we are not fully aware of. If the competing aspects are not covered, we are not fully aligned and, therefore, not ready for successful change if we don’t address them. As such beliefs have a very strong impact on our subconscious, which has more power than our intentional willingness to do things differently.
As this is crucial for successful change, we will cover this topic in depth in the next article.
5. Accept discomfort as a necessary step on the way toward your goal
Growing and stretching feels weird, sometimes even painful. When we are overwhelmed, we intuitively go back to the known. No matter how bad it was, at least we know it and are used to it. This is human! So please be fully aware of this urge, as it is strong, and maybe you will even be able to embrace these feelings as they can show you that you are changing already.
As creatures of habit, it takes us a bit to change our habits and our patterns, but you can get there! With a well-structured plan and a good dose of patience for yourself. Also, change is not linear: We progress, go some steps forward just to take some back, and then go into the next phase afterward. Nobody says it will be easy peasy and if you ask yourself how this can be done with more joy and lightness? Being accompanied by trusted humans will make it much easier and more pleasant!
At Kairos in Company, we are here to skillfully walk with you, keep you accountable on your way, and make your change as pleasant as possible. Please reach out so we can talk about the possibilities.
Follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit our website for more info!
Fredrike Küpper & Valentin Thoben, Business Psychologist/ Psychsomatic Physiotherapist
Rike and Valentin dedicated their work to improve people's lives. Rike worked as Business Psychologist and Leadership Coach in the corporate world, whereas Valentin gathered more than 12 years of experience as a Psychosomatic Physiotherapist, treating patients in the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland.
With Kairos in Company they founded a network of professionals to serve your mental health and well-being in a modern, science-driven and yet extremely holistic way. Kairos is more than just a health service provider; it is a Companion on your journey towards holistic well-being.
So join Kairos and Company and discover a new dimension of health and wellness.
