Why Is It So Hard to Change My Behavior?

You want to change. You may even know exactly what you want to change.

Maybe you lose your temper too easily, avoid difficult conversations, become defensive when criticized, procrastinate, spend money you shouldn’t spend, or keep responding to the same situations in ways you later regret.

You’ve probably told yourself, I’m not going to do that anymore. And you meant it. For a while, maybe you even succeeded.

Then the familiar situation returned. The familiar feeling came with it, and before long you were doing exactly what you had decided not to do.

Afterward you wondered:

Why is it so hard to change my behavior when I genuinely want to change?

The answer may have less to do with how badly you want to change than with something we often overlook:

The old behavior has been practiced. The new behavior has mostly been intended.

Wanting to Change Isn’t the Same as Practicing Change

We tend to give intention more power than it actually has.

We decide we’re going to be more patient, stop getting angry, stop procrastinating, speak up instead of avoiding conflict, or stop worrying about what everyone thinks.

Those may be sincere decisions. But a decision isn’t yet a practiced response.

The behavior you’re trying to change may have been repeated hundreds or even thousands of times. You didn’t necessarily sit down one day and deliberately decide to develop it. You simply responded a certain way, then responded that way again and again.

And here’s something important: practice doesn’t have to be intentional to still be practice.

You probably didn’t consciously decide to practice losing your temper, avoiding difficult situations, becoming defensive, or procrastinating. But every time you responded that way, you practiced that response again.

The principles behind those behaviors were being practiced too. Avoiding discomfort practices comfort. Lashing out in anger practices allowing anger to control your response. Automatically defending yourself practices defensiveness. Continually putting things off practices procrastination.

Much of this can happen without our consciously recognizing what we’re practicing. We simply respond the way we’ve learned to respond, and repetition strengthens what we’re already doing.

That’s why an unwanted behavior can eventually feel natural even though we never consciously chose to develop it. What we repeatedly practice can become habitual whether we intended to practice it or not.

Eventually, what was repeatedly practiced became familiar. What became familiar required less conscious thought. Over time, the response may have become so normal that it began to feel like, That’s just who I am. A part of your character.

Then one day you decide to change it.

Consider the contest you’ve created. On one side is a response that has been practiced repeatedly. On the other side is something you decided yesterday.

The old response has practice behind it. The new response has intention behind it.

That’s one reason change can be difficult.

Knowing What to Do Isn’t the Same as Doing It

Knowledge matters. We need knowledge to make good decisions. But knowing what to do doesn’t automatically mean we’ll do it when the opportunity comes.

Most people who lose their temper already know that screaming at someone usually doesn’t improve the situation. Someone who procrastinates probably doesn’t need to be told that putting things off can create more problems. A person who repeatedly spends too much money probably understands that eventually the bill has to be paid.

The problem isn’t always lack of knowledge. Sometimes the problem is that what we know has not yet become what we practice.

You can agree with patience without practicing patience. You can believe honesty is important and still avoid telling the truth when telling it becomes uncomfortable. You can value responsibility and still make excuses when admitting a mistake costs you something. You can know that forgiveness is better than resentment and still rehearse an offense in your mind every day.

So when we ask why changing behavior is so difficult, we shouldn’t ask only:

What do I know?

We should also ask:

What have I been practicing?

Your Old Behavior May Have More Than Habit Behind It

Behavior doesn’t happen in isolation. Something occurs, we have an emotional response, thoughts and interpretations follow, and what we already believe, value, expect, fear, or assume influences how we understand the situation. Then we act.

How we naturally respond also differs from person to person. Understanding your own tendencies can help you recognize the responses you may have been practicing without realizing it. The free STAR Personality Assessment and Course can help you begin identifying those patterns.

Over time, that whole sequence can become familiar. That’s why simply trying to stop the final behavior may not be enough.

Suppose I repeatedly avoid difficult conversations. I could tell myself, Stop avoiding difficult conversations. But why am I avoiding them?

Perhaps I have learned to operate according to a principle such as:

Comfort: If something is going to make me or someone else uncomfortable, avoid it.

If that’s what is guiding me, stopping one act of avoidance doesn’t necessarily change the principle that keeps producing it. I need something better to practice.

For example:

Courage: Discomfort isn’t a reason to avoid saying or doing what I have good reason to believe is right.

Now I have more than a behavior I want to stop. I have a better principle to guide the behavior I want to practice instead.

What Am I Supposed to Do Instead?

This is where many attempts at change become incomplete. We identify what we want to stop: don’t yell, don’t avoid, don’t procrastinate, don’t become defensive, don’t worry.

But “don’t” doesn’t tell us what to do.

Stopping an old response creates a space. Something has to fill it. If I don’t want to respond in anger, how will I respond? If I don’t want to avoid a difficult conversation, what will I practice instead? If I don’t want to become defensive when corrected, what principle will guide me when criticism comes?

It’s difficult to practice an absence. It’s much easier to practice an alternative.

But that alternative should be more than merely different.

It should be better.

And that requires a principle to guide it.

A Different Choice Has to Be Practiced

Consider a man who has a habit of losing his temper. When something frustrates him, he raises his voice and says things quickly. Sometimes he says things he later regrets.

Afterward, he feels terrible about it. He apologizes and promises himself, Next time I’m not going to react like that. He sincerely means it.

A few days later, something happens. He feels the anger immediately, and his thoughts begin moving quickly: This isn’t fair. She shouldn’t have said that. He needs to understand how angry I am.

Before long, his voice is raised again.

Later he thinks, What is wrong with me? I knew better.

He did know better. But knowing better was competing against something he had practiced many times.

His operating principle in the moment may have been something like:

When I’m angry, I have a right to express exactly how I feel.

Now suppose he replaces it with:

Self-control: Being angry doesn’t give me permission to say whatever I feel like saying.

Notice that the better principle doesn’t require him to pretend he isn’t angry. His anger may be completely real, and there may even be a legitimate problem that needs to be addressed.

But the emotion doesn’t get to determine the behavior.

The next time anger comes, he has something specific to practice. He might say:

“I’m angry right now, and I don’t want to say something I’ll regret. Give me a few minutes, and then let’s talk about this.”

The problem may still need to be addressed. He may still need to speak firmly, and he may still disagree. But this time he has practiced self-control instead of practicing the old response again.

That’s one different choice.

And it matters.

The First Different Choice May Feel Unnatural

This is one reason people sometimes abandon change too quickly: the new response doesn’t feel natural.

Of course it doesn’t. The old one has been practiced, and it feels natural.

Suppose you’ve spent years avoiding conflict and decide you’re going to begin addressing problems honestly. The first difficult conversation may feel terribly uncomfortable. That discomfort doesn’t prove you’re doing something wrong. It may simply mean you’re doing something different.

But different doesn’t mean wrong.

The same can happen when learning to apologize, set appropriate boundaries, listen instead of interrupting, accept valid criticism, control anger, or say no when you’re accustomed to saying yes.

We sometimes interpret This doesn’t feel like me as This isn’t me.

But if every new response had to feel natural before we practiced it, very little character change would ever occur. Sometimes the better response feels unnatural precisely because the other response has had years of practice.

Willpower Has a Role—But It Isn’t the Whole Answer

Changing behavior often requires conscious effort, especially at the beginning. There may be moments when you simply have to choose, I’m not going to do what I normally do.

That is an exercise of the will.

But the objective isn’t to spend the rest of your life gritting your teeth and forcing yourself to behave properly. The objective is to practice the better response until it becomes increasingly familiar.

Practice a new choice deliberately until it begins to become a habit. Continue practicing it, and over time it can become part of your natural response—your character.

The progression is simple:

Principle → Practice → Habit → Character

At first you may have to stop and think, What am I going to do differently this time? After repeated practice, the better response can become increasingly available without the same amount of conscious effort.

Eventually, you may look back and think, That’s just what I have always done.

The behavior that once felt unnatural has become part of who you are.

Missing an Opportunity Doesn’t Erase the Practice

Suppose you’ve practiced the new response successfully several times and then fall back into the old one. It’s easy to conclude, See? I haven’t changed at all.

That’s not necessarily true. One return to an old response doesn’t erase every different choice you’ve practiced.

Instead, examine what happened. What were you feeling? What were you thinking? What principle did you follow? What did it produce? What could you practice differently when the opportunity comes again?

If you find yourself repeatedly returning to the same mistake, it may help to examine more closely what keeps producing it. Why Do I Keep Making the Same Mistakes? looks specifically at that question.

This process doesn’t have to take hours. It can be done in minutes or even seconds.

Then practice again.

Character isn’t formed by one perfect decision. It is shaped by what we repeatedly practice.

Change Requires More Than Removing Something

This is why changing behavior involves more than identifying what is wrong. If all we do is remove the old response, we’re left asking, Now what?

A better approach is to identify the behavior and then look underneath it. What emotions, thoughts, assumptions, beliefs, or principles are involved? Examine the principle being followed. Is it actually true? What does it produce?

Then find something better.

But “better” can’t simply mean something different or something I would rather do. The principle replacing the old one needs to produce a better way of responding.

Here are several examples:

Problematic principle being practiced	Better principle to practice
Comfort: If something is going to make me or someone else uncomfortable, avoid it.	Courage: Discomfort isn’t a reason to avoid saying or doing what I have good reason to believe is right.
Anger: When I’m angry, I have a right to express exactly how I feel.	Self-control: Being angry doesn’t give me permission to say whatever I feel like saying.
Defensiveness: If criticism makes me feel attacked, I need to defend myself.	Honesty: Examine what is being said honestly. Accept and correct what is true. Don’t accept what isn’t.
Procrastination: If I don’t feel like dealing with something now, I can deal with it later.	Responsibility: What needs to be done shouldn’t depend entirely on whether I feel like doing it.

Notice what we’re doing. We aren’t simply trying to remove an unwanted behavior. We’re examining what has been guiding it and supplying a better principle to practice in its place.

What principle should guide me instead?

When the familiar situation returns, deliberately use that better principle to guide a different response.

Then do it again.

Not perfectly, but deliberately and repeatedly.

The old behavior may have been practiced unintentionally. The new behavior needs to be practiced deliberately.

So Why Is It So Hard to Change My Behavior?

Because wanting to change isn’t the same as having practiced change.

The behavior you’re trying to replace may have years of repetition behind it. It may be connected to familiar emotions, familiar thinking, assumptions you’ve rarely examined, and principles you’ve followed without realizing they were principles at all.

That doesn’t mean change is impossible. It means we need to understand what change actually requires.

Don’t merely say:

“I need to stop doing this.”

Ask:

“What am I going to practice instead?”

And then go one step further:

“What principle makes that alternative worth practicing?”

When the opportunity comes, use it.

One different choice is an action. Repeated different choices can become a habit. Habits practiced long enough shape character.

The Layman’s Way

If you genuinely want to change but keep returning to an old behavior, don’t conclude too quickly that you lack motivation, character, or willpower.

Look at what has actually been practiced. Identify the principle guiding the old response and examine whether it’s true. Then identify the better principle and decide what practicing it would actually look like when the situation occurs again.

Then practice it when the opportunity comes.

Intention points toward change. Practice is what begins to build it.