When The Pain of Change is Less Than The Pain You're In, You'll Change

When the Pain of Change Is Less Than the Pain You’re in … You Will Change.

This insight is based on Herzberg’s Motivation Hygiene Concept, which says that people are more motivated to avoid a negative pain than necessarily to pursue a positive. At some time, all of us have come to realize that motivation first starts with a dissatisfaction with where we are. The degree of that dissatisfaction and the ramifications of the situation generate the pain that you experience. Only as that pain increases over time and circumstances—in relation to the pain that it will take to alleviate the problem and/or to bring about change—are you motivated and pushed to move forward.

There is no growth without pain. Change for the better always requires letting loose of a certain degree of the status quo. You realize then that the pain of moving ahead—the trials, the frustrations, the disappointments and the failures—are always better than the situation you once found yourself in. Change won’t begin until you seize the courage and mental discipline to immerse yourself in a certain amount of pain and disappointment concerning where you are in the present.