People often cling to the fear of failure to describe why someone might not want to change their lives. However, people are far more complicated than that. If you feel stuck, it may not have anything to do with fear of failure; it might be one or more of these nine other psychological reasons that are keeping you from changing your life. And once you identify the why, you can then find a way forward.
1. Being loyal to the past.
Some people self-sabotage because they are loyal to their past. They have defined themselves or their lives in a particular way, and they feel guilty when they try to evolve past it. Instead of feeling pride, they derail their success to keep them closer to whatever their mental image is. It’s almost a feeling of betraying who you were or the life you had if you dare to become something more. I experienced this myself when I started to recover from my mental illness.
As someone who’s lived with Bipolar Disorder for the majority of my life, I had a lot of attitudes that were influenced by it. I felt like a social outcast and a misfit because of the ways in which my mental illnesses would cause me to act. I proudly wore that self-perception about myself and my life choices because hey, this is who I am. Right?
Well, no. It was what the mental illness was making me out to be. I had to eventually come to terms with the fact that mental illness is not who I am any more than diabetes would be. It was just one piece of me. A big piece of me, mind you, but a piece of me nonetheless. I had to leave that behind in order to change my life for the better.
2. The current circumstances are comfortable enough not to change.
“Comfortable” can be a complicated word in this context. To be comfortable doesn’t necessarily mean the situation is good. Instead, what it can mean is that the person is familiar enough with their bad circumstances that changing them feels scary. You often find this kind of thinking in people who have come from abusive homes or stayed in abusive relationships.
The unknown feels so much scarier because you don’t know what might happen. Instead, you opt for the comfortable chaos, abuse, and suffering because you understand how to navigate it. The problem is that nothing stays the same. The discomfort that a person tolerates today may end up escalating into something far worse.
3. Avoiding clarity because clarity creates responsibility.
Many people don’t want responsibility. Clarifying what you want out of life, your goals, what you would change, and who you want to be creates pressure and responsibility to work toward those goals. Some people simply don’t want that kind of extra responsibility, so they choose to stay stuck in their present situation.
They view it as far safer to stay in a constant state of “Well, I don’t know…” because it’s low pressure, low responsibility, and low stress. Unfortunately, while that is a comfortable state to be in, it will eventually change for the worse.
What many people don’t realize is that not making a decision is leaving your fate up to random circumstances and the actions of other people. And most other people are not going to have your best interests in mind. Instead, they are going to make decisions that benefit themselves at your expense.
4. Confusing thinking and planning with progress.
This is another mistake I used to make a lot. I would sit down and do an unending amount of research, analysis, and thinking about plans instead of actually doing things. What I would eventually learn is how useless excessive planning can be. When I was a young man, I would try to map out every step along the path of the route I wanted to take.
Nowadays, I treat it more like the outline of a story. I map out the major points and figure out the path as I go. That cuts dramatically down on unnecessary research and gets me closer to achieving my goals. Besides, there are so many times when I’ve been knocked around by circumstances that I just couldn’t predict ahead of time. No amount of planning changes that.
My “analysis paralysis” was actually just procrastination I refused to acknowledge.
5. Being in an environment that reinforces stagnation.
It’s hard to grow when you’re in an environment that stifles growth. Perhaps you’re surrounded by people who never have kind things to say about your desire to be different. Why bother? Why would you want to do that? Aren’t you happy? You should be happy with what you have.
Alright. Well, why do they have to phrase it that way? The reason that other people might hold you back is that it holds up a mirror to their own shortcomings. They choose to stagnate, and they want you to stay stuck where they are, too. They don’t want to be confronted with the fact that they could be doing better if they wanted to, but they just don’t want to.
Instead of taking responsibility for that, they just try to drag you down to their level, and if you stay there with them, you’ll never change your life for the better.
6. Viewing identity as unchanging.
The problem with identifying yourself with a particular behavior is that you can lock yourself into that behavioral pattern. For example, if you view yourself as someone who is risk-averse, you’re going to subconsciously choose to take fewer risks than someone who doesn’t define themselves that way. The fact of the matter is that life is all about risk.
But then there’s also a huge risk in defining yourself by limiting labels because you may become those labels and believe you can’t evolve beyond them. As Psychology Today shares, it’s hard to break out of the confines of an inaccurate label once you’ve placed it on yourself.
For example, the risk-averse person may just be anxious about the unknown. Playing it safe isn’t the right way to go about pushing against that anxiety; otherwise, it’ll just limit their life and opportunities.
7. Underestimating how much work change really is.
To change your life in a significant way requires far more work than many people realize. You can often see this reflected in how people who are critical about therapy talk about it. “Well, therapy didn’t help me.” And they what, went for a few months, and that’s supposed to fix 30 years of dysfunctional behavior? Nah.
The fact is that meaningful, positive change is hard. If it were easy, everyone would do it. But they don’t because they aren’t as committed as they think they are. They hit a roadblock, decide it’s too hard, and give up instead of trying to find a way around the obstacle. That, in turn, traps them in a rut of their past, which will carry forward into the future.
8. Being more attached to being right than improving.
To cling to the notion of being right can keep a person from moving forward. For example, let’s say that Todd is angry with the way he was raised. His parents were abusive, and he is rightfully angry about that. Totally fair and valid. The problem is that his parents really don’t care. They make every excuse for their terrible behavior, but Todd can’t let go of the idea that they need to be sorry for what they did.
That, in turn, causes Todd to make decisions that undermine his own growth and happiness. He refuses to let go of the anger because his parents won’t acknowledge his pain, not realizing that they are still controlling him.
Is Todd wrong to be angry? No. He’s not wrong at all. But he’s not going to improve and heal until he can accept that his parents aren’t the kind of people who are ever going to care or accept that he is right. Some people just suck, and you need to accept that and stop trying to change them in order to move forward with your own life.
9. Waiting for inspiration to act.
Life isn’t a movie. There isn’t always some grand turning point on a Hero’s Journey just waiting for you to experience it so you can get your life together. As someone who’s been around the block once or twice in my own life, you eventually learn that “rock bottom” is really just a convenient storytelling device.
As bad as things can be, you eventually learn they can always get worse. At some point, you just have to decide enough is enough and start taking action. In fact, the sooner you make that decision, the better off you’ll be.
Closing thoughts…
A fear of failure is a real and valid thing. I’ve experienced that myself after a long history of getting life so very wrong. But it’s not what holds most people back. What holds most people back is comfort in their suffering. They understand their suffering, so they keep themselves locked into that which is familiar.
And there are plenty of other reasons why a person may not change their life, which we’ve covered a lot of. Once you’re aware of your reason, it’s much easier to free yourself from the past and move forward.
