Why Do We Expect Ourselves to Change Overnight?

There seems to be this strange expectation we place on ourselves that once we've recognised something, we should immediately know how to change it.

We realise we're people pleasers and think we should suddenly be able to say no without feeling guilty.

We recognise that we need boundaries and expect ourselves to know exactly where to put them.

We realise how harshly we speak to ourselves and decide that from tomorrow we're going to stop.

We notice that we're always putting ourselves last, so we promise ourselves that this time things will be different.

And for a while, perhaps they are.

Until somebody asks something of us and before we've even had time to think, we've said yes. Or we find ourselves apologising for something that doesn't need an apology. Or somebody is disappointed with us and suddenly every boundary we were so certain about feels much harder to hold. Or we hear that familiar voice inside our head again.

And that's often when another conversation begins.

"Here I go again."

"I should know better by now."

"Why do I keep doing this?"

"I thought I'd changed."

And perhaps the most painful one of all: "It's my fault."

Maybe you've experienced this too.

Perhaps you've had one of those moments when you suddenly realised you were doing the very thing you thought you'd stopped doing. And maybe your first response wasn't curiosity or understanding.

Maybe it was disappointment in yourself. But I've been thinking about this today.

Why do we expect ourselves to undo in a few weeks something we've spent decades learning?

If you've spent much of your life keeping the peace, saying no isn't just a word. If you've learnt that being needed makes you valuable, putting yourself first occasionally may feel incredibly uncomfortable.

If you've spent years measuring yourself through other people's approval, somebody being unhappy with you might still feel like you've done something wrong.

Knowing where a pattern came from doesn't automatically make it disappear.

And understanding ourselves doesn't mean we will never fall into an old pattern again.

Perhaps we're asking something of ourselves that we would never ask of somebody we loved.

Imagine your closest friend sitting opposite you. She's telling you she's done it again.

She's said yes when she wanted to say no. She's allowed somebody to cross a boundary she promised herself she would protect. She's gone back to a situation she knows isn't good for her.

She's spent another week looking after everybody else and barely thought about herself.

Would you look at her and say:

"Well, clearly you haven't learnt anything."

Of course you wouldn't. You'd probably remind her of how far she's come. You'd tell her she's learning. You might help her see what happened this time so that perhaps next time she notices a little sooner.

You'd give her room to be human.

So why is it so difficult to offer ourselves the same grace?

There is something we often miss when we're judging ourselves for falling into an old pattern.

We noticed it.

There may have been a time when you would have said yes without ever questioning why.

Now you notice the resentment afterwards.

There may have been a time when somebody else's disappointment would automatically have become your responsibility.

Now there's a small part of you wondering, Is this actually mine to carry?

There may have been a time when the voice saying you're not good enough simply felt like the truth.

Now, perhaps, you occasionally hear it and think, There I go again.

That might not feel like enormous change.

But it is different.

Because awareness creates a space that wasn't there before.

And inside that space, eventually, there is choice.

I've always loved that saying.

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

But perhaps we've misunderstood what the change needs to look like. It doesn't always have to be the enormous boundary, the dramatic decision or the moment when we finally declare that we're never putting up with something again.

Sometimes it's much quieter than that.

Maybe this time you pause before saying yes. Maybe you still say yes, but afterwards you recognise why. Maybe you say no and feel terribly guilty about it, but you don't go back and change your answer. Maybe you catch yourself saying, "It's my fault," and instead ask, "Is it?"

Maybe the conversation in your head starts exactly as it always has, but this time you don't follow it quite as far.

Those moments can be easy to dismiss because they don't feel dramatic enough to count.

But perhaps that's how change happens.

Not overnight.

Not perfectly.

But one small different choice at a time.

Perhaps there is something in your own life that you thought you would have sorted out by now.

A boundary you still struggle to hold.

A pattern you keep returning to.

A conversation you continue having with yourself.

Something you know intellectually, but don't always manage to live.

Instead of asking yourself, "Why am I still doing this?" perhaps there is another question worth asking.

What's different about the way I see it now?

Because maybe the fact that you can see the pattern at all means something has already changed.

And perhaps today doesn't need to be the day you finally get it all right.

Perhaps it can simply be the day you notice.

And the next time life gives you the opportunity, you make one small choice differently.

That counts too. 🤍