The second half of the holidays has a particular quality. Some of us are already back to work, others are still winding down. Either way, it’s a natural pause, a good moment to ask what we’d actually like to change in our lives.
Most of us know what we want to change. The harder question is why we keep doing the same thing over and over.
I am a fan of Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey's work at Harvard. For over three decades, the two of them have studied why change is so hard, even for people who genuinely want it and have every reason to make it happen. Their explanation is not that we're lazy or short on willpower. It is because we carry a hidden commitment, quietly working against the change, protecting us from something we fear. They call it Immunity to Change, and it earned its name for a good reason: like an immune system, it works below our awareness, defending something we haven't fully named.
Why we don't change what we say we want to
Kegan describes the method as a kind of mental X-ray, a way to see the parts of our own thinking that keep new ideas from landing. He and Lahey built it around four questions, and I have found that walking through them slowly, one at a time, uncovers more than thinking about "the problem" ever does.
The four questions
The first question is simple to ask and hard to sit with: what do you genuinely want to change? Not the version you think you should want, the one that's actually true for you.
The second asks what you do instead. Not in theory, but the behavior you actually fall into, or the thing you quietly avoid, even while telling yourself and others you're working on it.
The third is where it gets uncomfortable. What would feel risky about truly changing? There is usually something you're protecting: safety, control, not looking foolish, being needed. Naming that thing out loud tends to feel exposing, which is often a sign you're close to something real.
The fourth question asks what assumption keeps the pattern alive. An unspoken belief you've never really tested, that's been running quietly in the background, shaping your behavior as if it were fact.
Kegan and Lahey call this the four-column method, and I'd recommend reading their original work if this resonates, it goes considerably deeper than I can here.
What I'm working on
For me, the thing I keep circling back to is saying yes without thinking. I agree to something, and only later, standing in the middle of it, do I ask myself whether I actually wanted to. Sometimes the answer is yes. Often, if I'm honest, it isn't.
So I'm working on pausing before I answer. Actually considering what's being asked and what it would mean, then saying yes on purpose to the things I want, and no, or something else, to the rest.
What I'm protecting by not doing this is harder to admit: I feel like I'm risking relationships, both at work and in my personal life, if I stop being the person who's always available. Underneath that sits an assumption, or really a handful of them. That if I can help, I should. That it's easy for me, so why wouldn't I. That I won't be needed if I stop saying yes to everything.
None of that has been tested. It's just been running in the background, unexamined, for a long time.
Still in progress
This is still very much in progress. Not easy, but there are signs of spring.
What would you like to change in the weeks or months ahead, and what might be quietly keeping it in place?
