Avoid the resistance

Most people have a tendency to resist that which is new. Why?

There are many different answers, but on the whole, they pretty much boil down to fear. What is old or traditional is something familiar. It can be counted on quantified and measured. Things that have been done a certain way for a long period of time create patterns and routines in the lives of the people that do them that certain way. Pathways get ingrained in the minds of people following tradition.

The "normal" way that people do things is something they are comfortable with because they know exactly what to expect as a result. It usually does not really matter to them that the result is inefficient, painful, difficult or only just barely gets the job done.

Quite, often a logical thinking person can point out all kinds of flaws in the "normal" way, things that actually make the thing more of a burden than it needs to be. Even if you can prove that the new way to do a thing is better in every way most people will still resist it kicking and screaming and look for every reason to hold onto tradition.

Again, this is due to fear. People do not fear that which they are used to, even if what they are used to is slowly killing them over time. What they fear is the unknown. They fear that your new way will somehow be much worse than the old way even if all the logic in the world points the other way. While you may be able to show a person reams of facts and figures showing them how a new way of doing things would benefit them, until they actually experience the benefits it is not and often can not be perceived as real to them.

In their minds what is known, no matter how hazardous it may actually be to them, is "safe" and what is unknown is not. This may seem like a pretty stupid thing to say until you realize that their definition of safe is not the standard dictionary definition. What people clinging to old ways of doing things mean by safe is something with which they are familiar enough to be able to accurately weigh the pro's and con's in any given situation having to do with that thing. The new way is something with which they have no familiarity at all. There is no data, from their personal experiences, for which they can use to calculate on their own the good and bad of the new thing. All they have is your word and their own suspicion and pessimism. And unfortunately for them suspicion and pessimism usually win out over faith in other people.

The problem with tradition is that there is familiarity but no room for improvement and no room for growth. And where there is no growth there is only stagnation and death.

We need new things in our lives to help us to grow and improve. We get to have new ways of doing things that allow us to become more than we are, to fill in bigger and bigger places in the world. New more efficient ways of doing things allow us to do better in school and business and to have more free time. New ways of handling relationships allow us to enjoy more of the time that we do get to spend with the people we love, rather than fighting with them all the time.

If you do the same things you have always done, you will have the same things you have always had. If your life is exactly the way you want it to be maybe you do not need to change a thing. Perhaps, what you are doing is working for you. But if you are not happy with your life, you can choose to keep on suffering. Or you can choose to change it. But you will not be able to change it by sticking to old ways of doing things. In order to change your life for the better, you get to get over your fear and do something new.