In my work I talk with many different people. My role is to promote change, to help people break patterns, to open up new possibilities for them.
My assumption, reasonable or otherwise, is that when someone reaches out to me they DO want to change. But that is not always the case. Here are two examples.
Example 1: A family business—one with the father, mother, and a son working in it—is unhappy with its current work/life balance. Everybody is stressed and not communicating effectively. The father, who is the key to the puzzle, constantly has his head buried in a computer.
I am asked to facilitate a conversation between the three of them. That turns out to be impossible because only the mother and son are on the two calls we had.
Example 2: A business owner is not in control of his life. The business demands are overwhelming him. He says he wants help with normalizing his life. We set up a call.
During the call he is so wound up that he has a hard time listening to and considering what I offer him. I think we had one, at the most two, calls. Then our working relationship is over.
What gets in the way of people overcoming self-acknowledged dysfunctions?
The Pain You Know Is Normal
The prospect of change is scary. Yes, you keep on running into a wall, but you know what it feels like and you are used to it.
What if you try to change? The thought of possibly more pain overcomes the motivation to take a chance.
When on Overload, a Better Future Seems like a Pipe Dream
Operating at maximum capacity because you are always overcoming the roadblocks you place in your way ends up feeling normal—not necessarily good, but just the way it is.
Slowing down and looking at yourself objectively is the only way to stop that pattern. But then you are too busy to take the time to do so!
The Pain is Awful, but not Awful Enough
My own experience is that you have to get so frustrated you simply cannot take another day feeling the way you do. Short of that happening you keep on keeping on, hoping (in a completely unrealistic way) that somehow things will be better and different.
For me, I hit the Too Awful point at several times in my life. I could not stand continuing doing the same things and expecting different results.
Only by being so distraught because I was functioning ineffectively was I able to take the next step and embrace an objective person’s perspective on the changes I needed to make. That was the beginning of the rest of my life.
Take the risk of accepting the unknown. All you have to lose is being paralyzed by dysfunction.