It’s pretty common for people to treat a new year as a new start in their life. People in their millions vow to give up smoking, to lose weight, to find a new job etc. In the vast majority of cases these people give up after a few days and most of the remainder are finished within a few weeks. For the few who stick at it, there is the reward of a new set of life experiences, better health, more income and other nice things.

What makes the difference? For the majority of us it’s to do with pain. We are motivated to make changes when the pain of staying where we are becomes greater than the perceived pain of making the changes. For example, the reason people find it hard to lose weight and don’t stick at it is because they believe that it’s a painful experience (emotionally and/or physically) and their current experience is that being overweight isn’t that bad (although they really do not like it). Therefore it’s much easier to stay where you are.

Often something major has to happen to move the pain, such as a major health concern or an unplanned change of circumstances. It is possible to make changes without such an experience, it involves really getting in touch with your reality. We are very good at ignoring, distorting and generally lying to ourselves about our emotional and physical pains, which is one of the main reasons people find change so difficult.

So give yourself a chance and spend some time asking yourself about the pain you are experiencing because you are not making changes in your life. If you can work out what you are simply accepting and then see more clearly how this is creating pain, you have a much greater chance of working through the lesser pain of making the changes to your life.

Ultimately, we follow the line of least resistance and we can use that to our advantage if we can realise that staying put is the most difficult and painful thing we can do.