…and Why a Novel Approach Is Needed
A study conducted by the University of Scranton on people’s ability to make lasting change, as measured by their ability to stick to a New Year’s Resolution, found that only 19% of people who resolved to change stuck to it after two years.
That study highlights the challenge faced in changing the conversation around race relations: Human beings do not find it easy to make lasting, authentic changes even when we know it is in our best interest to do so.
The odds of people succeeding in making a change are against them because of five main factors:
1) Their inability to see possibilities beyond the current point of view.
It’s hard for people to imagine life any other way than the way they’ve currently experienced it, and that difficulty makes it hard for them to keep making sacrifices for something that they aren’t sure will ever happen or is even possible.
2) Their entrenched beliefs and biases based on past experiences running unchallenged and unchecked.
Most people aren’t even aware of the beliefs and biases they hold that lead to the thoughts, feelings, and decisions they make about how to handle interactions with other people. Many of these beliefs and biases were adopted by them at much younger ages and are not something they are conscious of doing.
3) Their established habits of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Habits are hard to break for a reason: the brain finds this behavior to be the easiest and most efficient method of getting a need met, and the neural pathways of having chosen this behavior repeatedly over a long period of time are deeply entrenched in the brain.
Opening new pathways and doing things in a new way require conscious thought and energy, while doing things the old way doesn’t. The effort and energy required to turn a new habit into a subconscious decision is something the brain resists.
An analogy of this process, something that every sporting coach knows, is the creation of “muscle memory.” It takes ten thousand repetitions before it sinks in and becomes a reflex. This works not just for muscles, but for “learned” behaviors as well.
4) Peer pressure from existing relationships and surrounding communities.
Making a dramatic change in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is difficult enough, but when the person trying to change meets resistance from the people with whom they have existing relationships, such as family and friends or their surrounding community, that change becomes exponentially more difficult.
The person trying to change is often seen as rejecting those existing relationships or their surrounding community. It takes extraordinary strength to stand up and face down the risks of rejection, judgement, and even potential harm that may come from making a dramatic change.
Consider the public acceptance of smoking. In the fifties and sixties, smoking was more than acceptable — it seemed to be endemic to our society. Then, following public pressure and legislative limitations to where people can smoke in public, active addiction to tobacco dropped from nearly fifty percent in the sixties to under fifteen percent today.
Movies and TV show rating warnings about risk factors now include smoking along with sexual activity, violence, and strong language. In addition, smoking on the screen is either limited to historical films or when it’s in “today’s setting,” it’s almost exclusively limited to “bad guys.” This change took sixty years from the Surgeon General’s first warning, but it has become a society-wide behavior and attitude change.
5) Failure, Frustration, Discouragement, Disappointment, and Impatience.
Human beings would like for change to be a linear progression, going from point A to point Z without any stops in between. However, that’s not how change works. Change requires the development of a new set of habits to be formed and a new set of mental, emotional, and possibly even physical muscles to be developed to support those habits. As with a toddler learning to walk, there is a lot of failure that takes place before the change is successful and the transformation becomes permanent.
Human beings are not patient creatures. They are not patient with each other and certainly not with themselves. The expectation that change should be immediate and a straight line leads to disappointment when that doesn’t pan out in reality. Discouragement over repeated failures at the attempt to change can lead to frustration and, eventually, to the person giving up altogether and abandoning the effort to change as being impossible for them or impossible for the other person.
At Path To Publishing, we recognize that changing the conversation over racial inequity and the impact of that inequity upon children won’t happen overnight. It also won’t help without the support of a community.
That’s why we’ve chosen to crowdfund our movement in order to spread the word and invite public participation in this. We’re also working to develop a supportive community around the vision of creating a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable society for all, one that provides room for people to make these changes and practice new habits in an environment that focuses on progress rather than demanding immediate success.
We’re also going to offer Magnetic Thought Leadership Training to help each person who contributes discover and put to good use their personal power to influence others and enact change. We’ll also be offering a study guide to help our contributors navigate the challenges of holding inter-racial conversations around sensitive topics.
Discover more about our crowdfunding campaign and our efforts to start a movement designed to bridge the gap between the races at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. #JoinTheConversation, and thank you in advance for supporting the movement.