Old habits die hard

No matter how keen someone is to tell you how willing they are to look for new ways of doing things, they will still have to put in considerable effort to establish a change from their usual modus operandi. Willingness to change and ability to change easily are not the same thing.

Change means breaking a habit – and this is difficult because habits are unconscious actions, as we saw in Chapter 2. Anything you have learned to do over a period of time has become a habit. It may be a good habit (cleaning your teeth after a meal) or a bad habit (smoking a cigarette after a meal), but you can do it without thinking about the actions required to carry it out.

Change usually requires you to ‘break’ an old habit and replace it with the new one. Most of us can accept this concept, but find the consequences of trying to change either irritating or frustrating when our subconscious tries to do things the old way.