Loving The Things The Way They Are
We have various habits and routines that we go through every day. These help us to live and work in a structure, to overcome some of the burdens of life without much concentration.
But a time comes that the changes in environment force us to change things we are used to. Changing a habit or routine is not something we are fond of doing.
And sometimes the change is much more profound; our lives may change dramatically and we have to learn new ways to go on.
Change is hard.
It requires leaving the comfort zone. The uncertainty coming with change causes fear and stress.
We tend to think whatever we have now is a given, and we act as if things will stay the same forever.
But change is inevitable; it is only a matter of time before any given of today move away from us and become outdated.
People who are aware of this follow the change in their environment, with small steps.
People who resist the change encounter difficulties when, in the end, change is imposed upon them.
And the more prominent the change, the greater is the impact it has on our lives.
The same goes for businesses.
Some have a culture to follow the change; some disregard all the signs until it is too late.
Change is painful, but nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.
MANDY HALE
There is a phenomenon called the status-quo bias; we tend to prefer things to stay unchanged, live in our comfort zone; we see change as moving away from the normal.
The status quo bias is accepted as a psychological situation leading to irrational reasoning. The tendency to keep the current situation even though the expected benefits from change outweighs that of the current situation.
Some psychologists suggest that if we are aware of our biases, we might find ways to changing our behaviour to rational reasoning. Being aware of the status quo bias may lead to assessing the situation in a logical way and considering the options that involve change.
But others think that being aware will not lead to objective thinking. Status quo bias is also related to lazy decision making, only considering the solutions used before.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, in her article “Ten Reasons People Resist Change”, suggests that there are predictable sources of resistance to change which must be understood to deal with. There are psychological factors of resistance such as loss of control and increased uncertainty, and there are factors that are more material such as concerns about (lack of) competence in new situations and excess of work to be done while going through change.
She also mentions about the ripple effect; “change creates ripples, reaching distant spots in ever-widening circles”. Change has an effect that spreads to every aspect of life.
The reality is we are living in a continuous ripple effect, where the changes happening in our environment pushes us on track for change, in time, keeping the status quo becomes harder than following the pattern of change.
In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.
ABRAHAM MASLOW
It is said that the last two decades have seen the most dramatic and fast-paced change in human history. We do not have many options but change, intently or involuntarily.
Beating the status-quo bias, going through change, brings a better future.
Teoman Akyuz, 1 September 2020
Published on Medium on 7 September 2020