Why Is It So Hard to Change?

You know what needs to change. You have tried before. And somehow, you end up right back where you started. Here is why change is so hard, and what actually works.

Key Takeaways

• Why is it so hard to change? Because the patterns blocking you were built for survival, not happiness.
• These patterns form in childhood and run on autopilot until you actively interrupt them.
• Insight alone is not enough. Real change requires physical and emotional expression, not just understanding.
• A four-step Cycle of Transformation can help you identify and release even your heaviest patterns.
• This process works. With practice, even long-held beliefs can be permanently rewritten.

Why is it so hard to change, even when you genuinely want to? Most of us have experienced the frustrating cycle of seeing a problem clearly, resolving to do something different, and then finding ourselves months later living out the exact same pattern. The reason this happens is not a failure of willpower or discipline. It is the way the human brain is built.

Screaming with strangers

The sweat dripped down my face as I sat in a circle of people who until recently had been strangers. I was 20 minutes into beating the shit out of a huge pillow with a bat. On the pillow lay a smattering of paper whereon I had previously written down a series of ‘patterns’: parts of the way I had learned to live in childhood that had been running my life in unconscious ways as an adult.

The woman next to me was shouting. Standing above her pillow and screaming No fucking more!

Where was I? How did I end up here? Did I want to be here? Was this brilliant work or completely crazy?

I had found my way to the Hoffman Institute at the suggestion of two of the more accomplished and thoughtful people I have ever met. I was thus inclined to lean into the 7-day process in spite of my reservations.

As a long-time founder/CEO turned coach, I have been privileged over the last 20 years to experience quite a variety of professional development, personal development, coaching, therapy, retreats, etc.

I have attended CEO and coaching boot camps, a 10-day silent meditation retreat, a 10-day quest, and more. And in spite of my early hesitations, I must admit my time at Hoffman was the most transformational work I have ever experienced.

My time at Hoffman transformed my understanding of myself as a human as well as my work as a coach. Since completing Hoffman, I have integrated much of their teachings into our coaching work. The most critical inclusion is Hoffman's teaching on patterns, which I will share here. If you want to understand why change is so hard, and how to break old patterns for good, this framework is a powerful place to start.

What Is a Pattern, and Why Does It Run Your Life?

A pattern is a belief we take on in childhood as a result of the way of living that is modeled for us by our parents or primary caretakers. In the earliest years of our lives, we are not capable of differentiating from our parents nor of evaluating their behaviors as positive or negative. In order to survive, we simply accept their behaviors as the right way. We mimic their way of behaving in order to ensure we retain our position in the family, are cared for, and therefore, survive.

Patterns thus tend to look like us mimicking the beliefs or behaviors we see our parents exhibiting. (Occasionally, they also show up as the inverse of what beliefs or behaviors we see. An example might be a reaction of chaotic living after experiencing a parent who was overly controlling.)

It may be helpful to understand patterns as:

• Conditioned: we learn them from others
• Automatic: when facing a stimuli, we respond without thinking in our pattern
• Reactive: we are not planning to live out of a pattern, we do it in response to a trigger or stimuli

Common patterns in founders and leaders

Examples of patterns I often see in founders and leaders include:

• Nothing I do is enough
• I am alone; it is all on me
• The world is an unsafe place
• It is my job to keep everyone safe
• Achievement comes through pain and struggle
• Do not trust others
• I feel enough by achieving
• When I do achieve, I will move the goalposts

Most leaders look into CEO coaching when they have some sense that what got them to this point is not what is going to help them go forward. Often this shows up as suffering, burnout, or ineffectiveness in the role.

One way of understanding this state of being in the arc of leadership is that the patterns that were effective or tolerable in prior years are not anymore.

For example, a founder/CEO might find that in childhood, college, and even in her early years a pattern of ‘It is all on me’ was quite effective. She was responsible for her studies. In her earliest jobs, as an individual contributor, she excelled. As a founder, in the early days, she (and perhaps her co-founders) did in fact do most or all of the work. Thus the pattern was effective. But a pattern of ‘It is all on me’ becomes pretty difficult to maintain while trying to scale an organization for greater leverage. A leader carrying this pattern will take on too much work, will micromanage, and will certainly burn out.

In coaching work, we might look at how this leader is carrying her role, and how the organization is structured. But if we do not address the underlying pattern, this leader will not change. She will find other reasons to take on more, or not to trust the team, in order to reinforce the belief that it is all on her. She will do so because her subconscious believes this pattern is tied to her survival. The oldest parts of our brain do not solve for well-being. They solve for survival.

Why Insight Alone Will Not Set You Free

This is the piece most people miss. You can understand your patterns completely, trace them back to childhood, name the parent you learned them from, and still find yourself acting them out the next time you are under pressure. Why? Because understanding is a cognitive act. Patterns live in the nervous system.

The subconscious operates faster than conscious thought. By the time your logical mind has identified that a pattern is activated, your behavior has already shifted. You are already withdrawing from a difficult conversation, already taking on work you should delegate, already telling yourself the story that it is all on you.

This is why change requires more than reading or thinking. It requires work at the level where the pattern actually lives: in the body, in the voice, in the breath. This is what the Cycle of Transformation is designed to address.

How to Break Old Patterns: The Cycle of Transformation

A client recently shared with me in session his experience that no matter how hard he worked, he never had enough time or resources to succeed.

As I began to ask how far back in his life this experience went, he shared about his childhood and approach to life that his father had modeled for him. He had grown up with modest means, and his dad (and grandfather) had explicitly and implicitly modeled for him a key life belief that there is never enough.

I introduced the idea of patterns and walked him through the way they show up and dictate our lives. He identified his beliefs on enoughness as a pattern and asked how we might help him be free of these beliefs.

I introduced him to the Cycle of Transformation. And we helped him move through and release the pattern in the session.

This is some of the most powerful work we do in coaching because it moves behind helping clients simply understand or explain the problems they are facing and into the psychological work of altering the subconscious operating system that is holding them back.

The four steps at a glance:

Step 1: Identify the Pattern

The first step is to name the pattern. There is no need for this to be perfect or right; it is enough to simply put a label on the belief that feels right to you.

It is important to identify, as you are able, from which parent or caretaker you learned this pattern as well as the parent or caretaker from whom they learned it. For example: I learned this from Mom, who learned it from Grandpa.

Step 2: Physical and Verbal Expression of Change

The next step is to physically and verbally express your desire to release yourself from the pattern. While this was initially the part of the process that gave me greatest discomfort, as you can imagine from my opening story, I have come to find it as powerful and critical. And there is a lot of scientific data backing up the efficacy of this somatic work.

Any form of expression is fine. You could write the pattern on a piece of paper and then rip it up while speaking or shouting out loud your desire to get rid of this pattern. You could put it on a sticky note, attach it to the bottom of your shoe, and walk around on it while speaking out loud your determination to stop living with this pattern. The specific method matters less than the combination of physical action and spoken word.

Step 3: Compassion for Self and Others

The third piece is to hold compassion for yourself and for those from whom you learned the pattern. It may be in steps 1–2 above that some anger came up, and that is totally welcome…even important. But this part is about compassion. You picked up this pattern because you did not know any better and you wanted to survive. And so did the person from whom you learned the pattern.

You can do this by simply closing your eyes and thinking of yourself as a child, and the person from whom you learned the pattern as a child, and holding compassion for each of you having done the best you could at the time.

Step 4: Lay the Ground for the New

Finally, you want to take some space to explore how you would like to live without this pattern. This can be done effectively through visualization or meditation. Or, if you are more comfortable, sitting in silence and then journaling can also be effective.

Call to mind a scenario in which you were living by the pattern in question. Remember how you behaved and what you believed as a result of the pattern.

Next, ask yourself how you might have shown up in the same situation had you been free of that pattern. How would the authentic, real you have shown up without that pattern? How might you have most liked to have shown up?

Write down whatever comes up.

Moving ahead, as you approach situations where the old pattern would have been at play, you might invite yourself to pre-process the time by envisioning or journaling about how you intend to show up in the situation free of the pattern you have lived in the past.

Giving it a try

If you are curious about integrating pattern work in your own efforts at change, the details above are enough to get you started. Simply spending half an hour with your journal and identifying the patterns that are causing the greatest challenges in your life and work is a great place to start.

You might then pick one pattern to start with and take it through the Cycle of Transformation on your own.

With some patterns, you might experience overnight change. That is wonderful if it happens. Others, particularly core patterns (those you were trained in most strongly), may take more time and more effort. You may find yourself returning to the pattern during difficult days. Or, most likely, you will find yourself somewhere in the middle: the next time the pattern shows up you will be more aware of it and less driven by it. As you continue to work with the pattern, you can find your way to complete freedom even from your heaviest patterns.

Change is possible

If you find yourself struggling in some particularly painful patterns or experiences today, take heart.

You are not alone. It is human to struggle; and it is human to get stuck in the ways of being we learned as children.

But it is also possible to find change and freedom.

If you are a founder or CEO navigating the deeper psychological work of leadership, you do not have to do it alone. Founder burnout, self-worth, imposter syndrome, and the relentless pressure of the role are areas where coaching can make a real difference.

With love from LA,

Matt

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is change so hard even when you really want it?

Because wanting to change is a conscious intention, but the patterns blocking you are subconscious and automatic. They were formed in childhood as survival mechanisms, and they operate faster than your conscious mind can intervene. Understanding a pattern intellectually does not stop it from firing. That is why lasting change requires working at the level of the nervous system, not just the thinking mind.

What is the difference between a habit and a pattern?

A habit is a learned behavior, usually formed through repetition. A pattern is deeper: it is a core belief about yourself or the world, formed in early childhood, that generates a cluster of habits, reactions, and emotions. Breaking a habit might mean changing a behavior. Breaking a pattern means changing the underlying belief that drives multiple behaviors at once. Pattern work tends to produce more comprehensive and lasting change.

How long does it take to break old patterns?

It varies significantly. Some patterns shift dramatically after a single session of focused work. Others, particularly patterns formed early and reinforced over decades, require sustained effort over weeks or months. The most reliable predictor is consistency of practice rather than intensity of any single experience. Working with a coach or therapist can significantly accelerate the process.

Can founders and CEOs really do this kind of inner work while running a company?

Yes, and in my experience it is often the most high-leverage work available to a leader. The patterns that hold founders back tend to show up most visibly in leadership: in how they relate to their team, make decisions under pressure, and manage their own energy. Doing pattern work does not require stepping away from the role. It requires bringing honest attention to the moments when old ways of being are costing you the most.