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When New Becomes Normal
What’s normal to us now was once something that was new to us before
Perhaps one of the things that people can be most resistant to in life is change. As humans, we delight in comfort and security. The fear of change, the fear of the unknown, is a fear that is nothing short of common amongst all of us. And behind that fear of change also lies the fear of rejection. Among the most basic human needs, according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, is the need for love and belonging. Being rejected from love and belonging can cause trauma. It cuts deep like a knife, leaving scars that can often be felt throughout the course of our lives. And so, we do anything we can to avoid that feeling.
We make decisions that are safe. We stay in our comfort zones and stick to what we know so that we don’t get hurt. However, with keeping that mindset, we then forget that some of the very things that we take such comfort in were actually once things that may have frightened at some point earlier on — the things that now make us feel the most secure may have been one of the most drastic changes that we’ve ever made. We forget that we once embraced change before it had scarred us. And in life, we tend to take less risks as we get older.
We become so ingrained in our ways and get so used to our habits that we fall into a pattern that…
