Hello First name / friend,
Don’t Rock the Boat
We have all heard this saying, or possibly said it ourselves. It means, “stop making waves” and by “waves” we mean “change”.
Change is a constant in society and in our lives. We change cars, we change houses, and we change jobs. We have children, children grow up and they move out of the house (hopefully). We have change when we say hello to new friends and goodbye to old friends. Change also occurs when friends or family pass from this earth.
Normally most of us don’t like change, it introduces the fear or frustration of something new (like learning all the new buttons and switches on an unfamiliar car) or it is a grief event, a saying goodbye to something and as a society we aren’t good at grief or goodbyes.
Hence is the reason many of us have a Status Quo Bias.
A Status Quo bias can be defined as; when a person is presented with choices, and one of those choices includes staying in the present / current status. When this happens, we will choose the current status. In everyday language it means we don’t like it when someone or something rocks our boat. We resist change. We like to keep things just as they are.
A key fact here is that a Status Quo Bias can help us. For example, a widow filled with grief can have difficulty making decisions for a while. It’s totally natural and many refer to it as widow’s fog. The brain isn’t thinking clearly. So, she may have a status quo bias that pushes back from making big decisions and that can help her delay these decisions until the widows fog subsides, allowing her at a later date to make a better and more informed decision.
And this example goes for any period in life in which you feel your emotions have overridden your brain’s ability to think logically.
But Status Quo Bias can also become a way for us to avoid important decisions and that avoidance can cost us in many forms.
As I learned early in my career as a financial advisor, “Not to decide, is to decide”
Here's a plan to help you tame Status Quo Bias:
1-Ask Yourself, “Why am I resisting this change?”
Now if you ask yourself this when your emotions are flooded, you won’t give yourself an honest answer. So, if it’s possible, don’t ask yourself this in the heat of the moment.
And I want you to really sit with this question. Are you resisting change out of fear of making the wrong decision, or fear of being judged by a family member or peer for your decision? Is there a past memory that makes you resist change or this specific type of change? Is there a fear that the change will result in a lack of control, a fear of the unknown, or a lack of trust in the organization or individual proposing the change?
2-Brainstorm if there is a way to “Test Drive” the change.
If the change is a new car, could you rent that car for a week? If the change is moving to a new area, could you vacation there for an extended time period?
3-Condition your Brain for Change.
Some change is inevitable. Some change, such as death, you can’t rent or test drive. Here is where we need to put change into our weekly lives.
Start by asking yourself, “what is most comfortable in my life and what are my go to routines”. Make a list.
This list may include always eating at a certain restaurant, taking the same drive to work each day, eating the same type of foods, watching the same types of movies, sitting in the same church pew or sticking with the same hobbies we have had for years.
Now each month, take one of those things on the list and mix it up. Maybe a new list of restaurants. Next month, will be a new genre of movies. And the next month a new route to work.
At the end of each new experience do some journaling:
What were your feelings going into the new event?
What was that inner voice telling you?
How did you overcome those feelings or that voice?
What was the result?
You might have not cared for that new restaurant, but was it all bad? What were some pleasant, unexpected surprises that came out of the change?
Becoming more aware of our biases helps us create a pause before we react to our biases. And having a “training plan” to soften our biases can also help us recognize when a bias is helping us and when it is hurting us.
And thank you for investing in yourself!
