Why to change for the worse easily, and for the better — difficult?

Bad example, as we know, is contagious. People easily adopt each other's bad. But to improve, to acquire good qualities and habits is very difficult. The habit to develop? Easy. A useful skill? Will need some efforts. The reason for such injustice?
And yet, why do I write all the time about the plasticity of personality, about the fact that everyone can change and become strong, but where is the crowd of strong personalities? It is strange that, having such opportunities, adults do not only not change for the better, but often roll down.
These complex questions I will try to explain from the point a very simplified theory of stress and adaptation. All the dirty tricks to blame the adaptation. She is able to do with our personality wonders. And all this, depending on the approach. There is incorrect approaches to personality change and is correct. That, and the other I'm going to describe.
What we call "character" or "personality" or "identity" is not innate. This is something that is formed in the process of adaptation to the environment (mainly social) from the set of the material (including genes), which is. That is, in a certain point in time, we can consider a creature that was created from inside itself structure (personality), most adapted to the situation in which it lives. The maximum adjustment is not equal to perfect. The ideal is a happy life, in the active mode (active mode helps to ensure happiness for the future). A maximum adaptation is available, which is enough energy to adapt to the present all that was formed previously.
If a person is suffering, but does not change, it means that he still has the energy to live and suffer, but no energy to change. For the conscious changes you need a lot of energy, since you'll have to rebuild everything within itself. It's like a house that sways gender. Only the floor, but the cause may be in the Foundation and in the walls, and change all require large funds, which is not.
That's why when a person is planning a global change, often it all ends at the level of talk and promises to "start from Monday". Unrealized plans evoke a sense of guilt and waste more energy, so at some point one begins to perceive the aggressive calls for change. (He can even fight on the Internet with those who promote the lifestyle available to him).
Those who live differently adapted to their way of life. Adapted means changed from the inside out to obtain energy in this way. Now they just roll on the existing rails and very often condemn those who have no such rails. However, to change the rails need much more power than that on them just roll. Besides, those who roll often don't notice that their rails long ago rolled them the wrong way. For example, fitness health classes, quietly turned into something that destroys health and impoverishes life. Such fanatical crossfitter can be just as hard to give up the lifestyle that have become harmful as liebke to start exercise. The thing is that the first is adapted for lying on the couch, so saving endorphin (from the stress, he immediately runs out) and the second is adapted to the training, earning your body that same endorphin (relatively speaking, since there is a whole chain of elements, and it is not only popular "endorphins"). The first is experiencing the stress of trying to go to the gym, and the other from attempts to reduce the pace of the training. First nowhere to take energy for exercise, and the latter nowhere to take energy, except in physical education. Inefficient adapted both. But both are adapted, because their energy metabolism is functioning only in connection with the lifestyle, and trying to change a way of life, causes stress, that is the outflow of life energy. Stress is the fire that causes the system to quickly grab the nearest available mode of adaptation, and to leave it to perish.

In any case adapted to one way of living of the people will change this way of life? Only in one case. If the new way of life, but rather in the process of restructuring, it will appear immediately additional energy bonus, which compensates the stress of temporary maladjustment. That is, he needs a bottle of oxygen, which will help to cross from one Bay to another. If the container no, he's going to go in and then out, not afraid to cover distances under water. The energy in the literal sense, he needed the air.
And useless to such a person to say that another Bay life better. He believes, but doesn't understand how he can get there. Promises that there in a new way of life he will be happier, healthier and wealthier are worth nothing for him because he needed energy for the process of change, not later, when it will change. By the way, when it changes, the more energy it will really not needed. Your stress will disappear, he will feel comfortable. This is the meaning of adaptation. But any output from the adapted state is fraught with stress.

How to find energy in a restructuring process if this process causes a strong stress. Where to get oxygen to stay in space?

"Just decide!" "pull yourself together!" "gather the rag!" helps when you need a little internal changes and the stress that must be overcome is small, or when somehow the energy for change has accumulated (it looks like you want, not just "need" and "want"). But no point in such appeals have not, when a person has little strength and the changes they are required to large.

Why personal growth trainings help one, not to help others and maimed a third?

Because the trainings are creating a play space jump and saturate this space available energy. The objective of the training, in its perfect form: to pull a person out of the old reality, to pump up the energy in a specially designed social space ( emotionally saturated and filled with group ties) to edit and push out into the new reality. For pulling out the old reality and for the pumping energy used harsh, sometimes destructive techniques that do effectively pull out of a person from their usual environment and let him feel like a "new person." However, the training ends and the new real environment man never stepped, to a new real life he never adapted. At the same time to his old life, he has already returned maybe a new installation, he received, on a new method of producing energy using, but unfortunately, this new method and a new installation does not help him to start in reality, a new life. So this person goes to the next stage of the training. Then on the other. Instead of having to adapt to a new life, he adapts to the training. We can say that diving into the water from one Bay, he didn't make it to the other, he grew gills, and now he became an amphibian, which can live without trainings, without water. The only way of socialization such person to become a coach, that is, to transform training from a losing hobby into a profession.

If the person somehow, thanks to a good coach or private opportunities to learn from the training, something in real life and change your situation in life, we can say that the training helped him. Unfortunately, many coaches are more interested in the process of pulling out from reality and immersion into the space of training, and not adapted to real life. And the ways this adaptation is not well developed, unlike many ways to engage in the gaming space. Therefore, the majority of those who get involved, be challenged again in relation to reality. This means that participation in training funds to improve the situation in life (work, family) turns into a goal, and work only way to get money for the next training, where a person truly happy. From the families of those who become fans of the training, either quit, or was involved in the training of their spouses. (About the same way there are sects or any group of acquisitions).

Thus, we considered two inefficient way to change the personality. First – shimogawara and the prosecution itself. Second – visit training. I want to reiterate that and shimogawara, and training, in some cases, really help. However, their effectiveness and safety leave much to be desired.

To understand what a change method is effective and safe, remember the infamous "the bad example is infectious" and I think why. Why the worst people changing easily, and the best hard? Apparently, because the changes for the worst do not require the investment of energy. On the contrary, save it. An active person can easily be lazy. Slender man just getting fat. A decent person can very quickly fall under the influence of bad company (if such company would be nice). It is even easier to develop some kind of addiction: to begin a thicket to drink, addicted to Smoking, addicted to computer games. All the bad – and the bad, giving you the option of idleness, that is, relaxation of the will instead of its voltage. The less you have to invest energy, the faster arises the habit.

But how can you change yourself for the better, without investing any energy? If going downhill is easy, uphill always requires effort. Isn't it? Actually, not really, it all depends on how the system of reference. If the changes are for the better – far goal requires a lot of energy. If it is only a tool, and the goal is some fun energy is not wasted at all, and sometimes even arrives.

Imagine, for example, that the girl could not bring myself to go to the gym, sees among the regulars someone who calls her a keen interest. Isn't it, to go to an unpleasant place becomes easier, perhaps even on a holiday? Or, for example, a young man who could not persuade themselves to learn the language, acquainted with the bearer of the language, and they begin an affair. Since then, he has purpose – pleasure from dialogue with the girl, and the language becomes only a tool. As a result, the language is mastered quickly, easily, without effort of will and energy costs, almost imperceptibly. You can very quickly learn a computer program, if this program can immediately make something exceptional. A General cleaning is much more fun when you have to come the long-awaited friend. If you can come up with a scheme in which a useful purpose becomes only a means to achieving the goal, you're not wasting any energy.

Of course, to come up with such a scheme is not always easy and sometimes very difficult, and I anticipate the stories in the comments about how easy to apply this scheme in life. Sometimes very difficult, especially when what the person is nice, has nothing to do with what is useful, and combining them is impossible. Especially, this scheme is not valid when almost nothing left, like that, and life is slowly tightens Tina depression. And best of all, this scheme works when the interesting and nice man a lot. In this case, it can easily fit a chore in interesting work and to overcome the period of adaptation with virtually no stress. That is why active people are so easy to start new, and people stalled so hard to get out of it. But as soon as a new case developed, it ceases to cause stress, and perhaps even begins to call itself a pleasure.

It is on this scheme (although there are others which I will gradually tell) based mechanism connecting resources from scratch. But for this scheme must be a lot of already employed resources. For those who have no such possibility, it is useful at least to have this scheme in mind to spot the chance to implement it. And yet, at least not to blame themselves for failing to overcome stress changes (charges stress increase) or going on stress overcoming, to promote themselves compensation (feed energy).

Compensation of stress can become everything that person loves. Ideally, the person should be a whole set of pleasures and all these pleasures should be fairly harmless. Harmful momentary pleasure relieves stress, but enhances it in the future. For example, if the only pleasure became sweet food, stress and a lot of food like this need a lot of immediate stress is slightly extinguishes, and in the future causes an increase of the excess volume and the increased stress of dissatisfaction. In addition, the body is not getting from the junk food the necessary nutrients, and therefore its overall energy declines over time. The right decision, if and to comfort themselves with food, and not something else, to choose the most beneficial of what the body looks good. Tastes change, although not quickly, and that today brings a buzz tomorrow to start to deliver it. So your body gradually adapt to useful, and as a transitional phase to use a compromise. Nuts, candied fruits, halvah instead of crisps and cakes – it is a compromise, as well as natural dark chocolate instead of candy bars with caramel fillings. Let calories in such a useful food, not less and getting stuffed by it, not to lose weight, however, nutrients for the brain it is much more that will help in the future to have more energy, less holes from its lack (of stress), and hence to control the power mode will be easier. Especially easier than in a situation of hunger, which is the most stressful and therefore almost always replaced by periods of binge eating.

Food is just an example. Just need to do with any harmful pleasures, gradually altering them into useful. A useful, but unpleasant things gradually build in pleasant or to compensate for something good (for example, to reward yourself for the effort). In short, treat yourself very carefully, but don't get too comfortable. If you don't treat yourself with care, you will have stress in the present. If you allow yourself to relax too, stress is waiting for you in the future. It is necessary to seek a middle ground. published

Source: evo-lutio.livejournal.com/52003.html