Change is hard because what you're asking to change is often a self that got you through when you were young. It treats even a welcome change as a threat to its own place, and it pulls you back. That's why going back can feel like relief.
Someone else has the pen when Marisol walks in.
For six years she has taken the notes at the Monday planning meeting. Nobody asked her to, the first time. There was a pause, she picked up the pen, and the team was grateful. After that it was simply hers, along with the minutes, the summary that goes round afterwards and the list of who promised what.
This Monday a call with a supplier runs over, and she reaches the meeting room late. The newest person on the team got there first. He gives her a small wave with the pen and carries on writing.
So for once she sits with her hands empty. Halfway through, she says what she thinks about the delivery schedule, and two people nod and write it down.
By any measure, it went well. And all afternoon she can't settle. It's like the feeling of a door she isn't sure she locked. Late in the afternoon she opens the shared notes, finds two small mistakes, and fixes them without telling anyone.
The next Monday she's the first one in the room. The pen is in her hand before anyone else has sat down, and the relief is immediate, like slipping back into a coat she's worn for years.
Why is change so hard?
Change is hard because most of what we try to change belongs to a part of us that has done the same job for years. To that part, even a change you've chosen can look like losing its place. So it pulls you back, and the familiar way returns feeling like relief.
That's why the hard part, for Marisol, came after the meeting and not during it.
What was pulling Marisol back to the pen?
A self that has held the job for a long time.
For Marisol, the pen does a second job besides the notes. With it in her hand, she's part of every meeting and the subject of none. People look her way to check a name or a date, not to ask what she thinks. In any room with more than three people in it, that has been the safest place to stand, since long before this job.
I call a self like that a survival identity, and I mean the name kindly. It has done its job well for years.
Now look at that Monday from where that self stands. A meeting where she spoke and people nodded isn't good news. To that self it means no pen and no place: out in the open with nothing in her hands. As far as that self can tell, it's being let go after years of loyal service.
So it did what it has always done. It filled the afternoon with unease, sent her back to fix two mistakes nobody had noticed, and by the next Monday it had her in the room early, pen in hand.
This is the part of change people rarely see. What pulls back is a self guarding its place, and to that self, a change, even a good one, reads as its own ending.
Sara, our veteran RS Method Master Coach, gives free Zoom calls of twenty to forty minutes, for anyone weighing what might come next. Book A Free Session. Or read on.
Why does going back feel like such a relief?
Because something real comes back when you go back.
When Marisol picked up the pen again, the meeting didn't improve. The notes were no better than her colleague's, give or take two small mistakes. What returned was that old self, standing where it always stands, and with it the years-old feeling of being safely out of view. That's what the relief was made of.
Relief tells you the old self is back where it's used to being. It can't tell you whether you still want it there.
It's one reason a change can come undone just after it has gone well. Instead of pride, there's a strange exposed feeling, as if you've stepped out of a room that had walls. A day or two later the old way is back, and it feels like coming in out of the weather.
Why are even good changes so hard?
Because every change, however welcome, asks some familiar version of you to stand aside.
A promotion asks the long-time second in command to stop being second. A move to a new city asks the person everyone back home knew to become someone nobody knows yet.
Some people feel flat or oddly lost after a change they worked hard for. Part of what they're feeling is an ending. Something that had a job has lost it, and it's allowed to be missed.
When someone tells me about a change that held for a week and then slipped, I don't hear weakness in the story. I hear loyalty.
What does it mean if you keep going back?
It means the self that has kept you company for years is still at work, and good at it.
You are not broken. You are buried.
Underneath that self is someone who never needed a pen to be in a room. Nothing has happened to that someone. They've only been covered, by a self too busy keeping them safe to step aside. That someone is the one the remembering is about. The freedom is in the removal.
Whether people can change at all is its own question, and I've answered it in can people really change. Here I'm only asking why the road there pulls so hard.
Two things before the practice. If the old way you keep going back to is drinking, drugs, self-harm or a relationship that hurts you, this exercise isn't for that. Please take it to a doctor or a counsellor instead, and if you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
And a long stretch of feeling stuck can sit close to low mood. If yours has lasted for weeks, weighs on most days, or comes with thoughts of harming yourself, please get in touch with a doctor or a mental health professional. This page isn't therapy or medical care, so if you're in treatment, keep working with your doctor or therapist. Whenever you want to, you can also take any of this to a trusted friend or a professional, and say as much of it as feels right.
What can help in the hours after a change?
Try this around the next small change you make. It asks for a little planning and nothing more.
- Choose a change that's small and already planned. Something you're about to do differently anyway, like speaking first in a meeting or turning down an extra task.
- Look at the hours that follow it. The rest of that afternoon, the evening, the next morning. For Marisol, those were the hard hours.
- Put something steadying in them. A walk, a meal with someone you like, a call to a friend. Choose it before the change, not after.
- If unease turns up, notice it and carry on with what you'd planned. It needs nothing from you right away.
If the unease grows heavy, or old hurt comes with it, put the plan down and call a friend who knows you, or your doctor or therapist.
What kind of help fits a change like this?
If a self guarding its place is what makes change hard, these are what I'd look for in any help.
- Experienced people in the room. An old self can be stubborn company, and it helps to be among people who've sat with selves like it many times.
- An order that follows what comes up. A self that's guarding its place shows itself in its own time.
- No need to arrive changed. You bring what you've got, the old selves included, and start from there.
On each of those, here's what the 5-Day RS Method Experience page says. I lead all five days, and my Master Coach team works alongside me. The page describes the days as "Not a syllabus. An unfolding." Day 1 begins: "You arrive holding everything you've collected." And of Day 4, Who You Are Without It, the page says: "This is the day many people brace for, and the day most don't anticipate."
Clinical care is a separate thing, and by the page's own account the team is "transparent with anyone for whom clinical care is the right next step." If you're under a doctor's or a therapist's care, the organisers should hear about it before you book. If your doctor would rather you waited, wait. And if the cost would stretch you right now, holding off makes sense.
The guarantee is on the page in full: "Show up for all five days. At the end, if you honestly feel it was not worth it, say so on the spot, and 75% comes straight back to you. We keep only what the room itself cost, never the fee." For the current dates and the price, go by the page itself; they change from one cohort to the next.
That's the whole of my answer to the question in the title.
Huda, Google review: "I came to the 5-Day RS Method Experience not really knowing what to expect. Five days later, I walked away feeling that something inside me had shifted."
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.
P.S. If something you changed lately has been tugging you back ever since, that tug is old and loyal, and it deserves a kind look. The page behind Choose Your Seat sets out the five days in full.