Are You Fully Ready To Begin Working On Your Social Problems?

It's very, very common for people to feel they want to change some aspect of themselves, but if you were to dig a little deeper into their motivations, you'd find they're actually pretty on the fence about it. When it comes to working to fix their social problems, sometimes people think they want to make those changes, but deep down they're not 100% ready to.

I don't say this in an accusatory or derogatory way. I'm not saying everyone should want to improve their social skills right now. I'm also not saying that not wanting to change is something that's wrong with a person and needs to be fixed. I think not fully wanting to change aspects of ourselves is the default setting in most people, most of the time. It just seems to be part of human nature.

Pretty much everyone has a list of changes they'd like to make, or feel they 'should' make, but which they're not in any huge hurry to seriously implement. It's easy to think of examples: Eating better, getting in shape, getting more organized, not procrastinating as much, calling your parents more often, reading more books, taking up new hobbies, not playing video games so much, quitting smoking, and so on and so on.

So why don't people change more often? It comes down to a balancing of the Pros and Cons. Logically we all know what we 'should' be doing, but that's not as powerful a motivator of our actual behavior as the various rewards and costs we get from doing something. If something gives us a lot of benefits and we don't perceive it as carrying a high cost, we'll keep doing it. If changing seems harder and less rewarding than staying the same, we won't want to change right at that moment.

That isn't to say the status quo doesn't often have downsides. It usually does, but its impact often isn't strong enough to really push us to do something differently. The negatives of not changing often aren't as bad as the perceived negatives of changing. For example, someone may believe they'd look and feel better if they exercised more. But if they decide that the effort and discomfort and inconvenience of working out regularly outweighs the negatives of, say, thinking they'd look better if their stomach was a bit flatter, they're not going to start. Inertia is powerful. The ease and simplicity of just keeping things the way they've always been can be a big motivator not to make changes.

Another way to put all this is that people are often ambivalent, or on the fence, about making certain changes. When the pros and cons of their current behaviors are closely balanced, they'll often think about changing, or go back in forth in their minds. They may even make short-lived initial steps towards changing. They often won't go all the way though.

Stages of Change model

If you do a lot of reading about this topic, it won't be longer than five minutes before you come across the Stages of Change model. You may even have heard about it already. This model has a few variations, and how each stage works somewhat depends on the behavior in question. A quick summary of them is below. Like any model with stages, they aren't clear cut and people don't go through them in a neat, orderly progression. Even within a day a person's motivation may jump around between them.

Pre-contemplation: This is when someone isn't thinking at all about changing. The behavior may not even be on their radar as something to change, or if it is, they don't think it's actually a problem. The classic example here is an alcoholic who's in denial.

Contemplation: This is where the ambivalence starts to come in. This is when someone starts mulling over the idea of changing, but they're still quite unsure about it. A person could be in this stage for years, or never get out of it.

Preparation / Determination: Here the person is starting to lean more towards changing. They start doing some research into what they'd need to do to change, and how they'd do it. Motivation to change usually isn't clear cut here though, but it's stronger than in the previous stage.

Action / Willpower: This is when the person actually makes the change. It's the shortest phase in the sense that it doesn't take long to quit drugs, or start a diet, or begin going to the gym. Again, even here the person will likely still have some reservations about changing.

Maintenance: The long part isn't initially making the change, it's continuing it. It's about staying off the drugs, or keeping up a healthier lifestyle, or consistently practicing a new skill. And once again, the person may still feel some ambivalence about the change they've made. They may be tempted to go back to their old behaviors.

Relapse: This is when the person does return to their previous habits. Temporary relapses are common, and on their own aren't the end of the world if the person can learn something from them and get back on track. For example, someone may have stopped going to the gym for a month, but then realized that it was unrealistic to expect herself to go everyday at 6:30am before work. If the person's relapse continues, then they jump back to one of the earlier stages. Maybe in six months they'll be a different place mentally and the changes will stick this time.

People often aren't consciously aware of their motivations for doing things

A problem is that we're often not aware of the Pros and Cons lists we've made in our brains. One common scenario is for someone to to logically feel like they want to change, but they just can't seem to do it. They'll beat themselves up and say things like, "I know this is bad for me to do. Why can't I seem to stop doing it? I don't get it." The answer is regardless of all the 'shoulds' that we're aware of intellectually, on that more basic Pros and Cons level, there may not be enough incentives to start doing things differently.

I find mild procrastination is a good example to illustrate this. People can procrastinate for a variety of reasons, but one of the most basic ones is that regardless of the occasional stress and inconvenience it causes, it often works out just fine in the end. When people procrastinate they get the immediate benefit of getting to avoid something they find boring and unpleasant. They usually end up getting their work completed and handed in anyways. It may not even affect their grades, but if it does the person often doesn't care that much. Tons of people will tell themselves they 'should' have better study habits, but when you break it down procrastination works for them, so why would they change?

A second way not being aware of one's motivations can be a problem is when someone thinks they want to change, but they unconsciously act in ways that sabotage it. For example, someone may start seeing a counselor in order to get help in making a change, but then miss appointments, not follow the therapist's suggestions, and start arguments with them (a therapy client may also do these things for totally unrelated reasons, but in this example I get to say it's because of the above).

Again, I don't think there's anything wrong with not wanting to change. For one, changing is often hard, and everyone has the right to not want to take that on right this instant. I also think social skills specifically are something people don't have to change. It's each person's choice whether it's important to them or not. I mean if someone is addicted to meth, that's a pretty clear cut problem. But improving your social skills is more of an individual preference.

I do think that people should at least be aware of what their actual motivations are though, and then make an informed choice about how to continue from there. If someone was to say, "Yeah, I have a phobia of riding in elevators, but really, there aren't many elevators in the town I live in, and getting over my fear would be really scary and uncomfortable, so I'm just not going to do it", I'd have no problem with that. I can suck though when someone is super hard on themselves for not being able to change, and they don't know why they're acting the way they are.

Desire to change can come quickly

Sometimes people will gradually come to a decision to change. However, at other times a person can quickly go through a mental shift that finally leads them to enact the changes they've been contemplating for so long. Often there's some external factor that pushes the person over the edge:


Reasons people may not feel ready to work on their social problems

Okay, I just spent around 1500 words talking about readiness to change in a general way. I'll talk about social skills more specifically now. I can think of a bunch of reasons someone may not be completely keen to start improving their social skills:

An exercise you can try is to make a Pros and Cons grid, comparing the costs and benefits of both changing and keeping things as they are in terms of working on your social skills. It can be easier said than done, but to do the exercise well you have to be really honest with yourself. Don't worry about how you 'should' think or act, just straightforwardly write down how you're feeling. For example, someone might feel they want to make more friends in a way, but admit to themselves that they're not that lonely just staying in most weekends and reading. They may also decide that they feel it's too much effort to try and meet people at this time in their lives. Again, it's extremely common to feel on the fence about changing and there's nothing wrong with it.

Some signs someone may not totally want to change

When someone is ambivalent about changing, but not totally in touch with that, there are some common things they can do:

Actions don't match up with thoughts or words

It all comes down to this. If someone keeps saying they want to make a change, but over time their actions aren't matching up with that, it's possible that they're not fully ready to do so. I think we've all known someone who has done this. There are other possibilities too. Someone may be lacking the knowledge about how to go about changing, and that's why they're not going ahead.

"Yeah, but..."

Another sign someone may unconsciously not be ready to change is that they "Yeah, but..." every possible suggestion someone gives them about how to improve some aspect of themselves. There are other totally understandable reasons someone may question a suggestion, but if they do it for every one, it's possible they aren't ready to take action.

A common social skills situation where people may "Yeah, but..." is when it comes to making friends. Under the surface they may just be anxious about the idea of putting themselves out there, trying to meet people and make conversation, and possibly getting rejected. But if they're not aware of that what can happen is they'll shoot down every possible avenue for meeting people, or every possible type of person they could be friends with, or every way to make plans with people ("Yeah, but joining a sports team is too expensive for me", "Yeah, but I just don't relate to any of the people in my residence", "Yeah, but I can't ask a guy to hang out one-on-one, it would be too awkward.") Again, having reservations about, say, some of the ways to meet people is probably to be expected, but if someone has a reason why everything can't work, you have to wonder.

Feeling defensive

People who aren't ready to change will sometimes feel defensive towards the suggestion that they have a problem, or about specific strategies on implementing new habits. If you take someone who's not wanting to change, and start telling them about how their behavior is hurting them, or what they should do differently, they're going to get annoyed at you and not want to hear it. On the other hand, someone who is ready to change may totally agree you and be eager to hear your ideas.

I know sometimes when people read certain parts of this site they will feel defensive. Now it's totally possible that there are just sections of this site I just haven't worded in the best way, and those cases are my fault for not expressing my ideas well enough. But another thing to consider is that the defensive readers aren't completely up for changing their social skills. Maybe they kind of thought they were before they started reading, but the defensive reaction is an indicator that they really aren't.

Making yourself want to change more

Often someone will realize they're ambivalent about changing, but intellectually wish they were more motivated. One thing that can help is to go back to your own personal Pros and Cons list and try to emphasize certain aspects of it to yourself. What would be good about changing? How you can make those benefits more salient in your mind? What are the costs of not changing? How can you make those stand out to yourself? Yeah, they may not do too much harm by tomorrow, but what's the downside going to be in ten years if you still haven't worked through them?

You may do this exercise and still not be totally motivated to change. You may come to this understanding yourself, or your actions may do the speaking for you. In that case, don't sweat it. You weighed the various factors and came to a conclusion that works for you at this time in your life. Not a problem. Maybe down the road things will seem different.

Another suggestion is to try and read up on ways to make the difficult parts of changing more manageable. For example, someone may be reluctant to get more organized because they see it as hard and annoying. But if someone gave them a bunch of good, tested organization strategies, they may not see the task as that daunting any more. Obviously when it comes to social skills, this site may help in that regard.