The most ironic thing about our fear of change is that we’ll often cling to previous circumstances even when the new is demonstrably better for us.
That’s because the hell we know is better than the heaven we don’t. You might dislike your major but you stick with it because you’re good at it. Or because you’ve already invested a lot of time in it. Maybe there’s a high-paying job at the other end of your degree, and so you’re willing to put up with something you aren’t passionate about.
You’ve created emotional and intellectual connections to your present circumstances that have to be broken before you can comfortably move into something new. You might discover a career path you love, but the prospect of changing everything to get there feels like too much. Your old major has become part of your identity and changing it feels like an attack on who you are.
We expend a great deal of mental energy constructing mental models of the world. These help us make sense of who we are and what the world is to us. We hate change because it throws a wrench into these models, interrupting our understanding of ourselves and the world. The larger the change, the larger the wrench, and the more damage we might fear it will cause.
The trick to embracing change is to recognize that we don’t actually have any real control over anything. Change isn’t just a part of life, it is life. Any sense of order we feel is an illusion we’ve created to help us keep our bearings. So just accept that nothing is constant and change is inevitable.
And right now you’re probably resisting that change in thinking. And so the human condition continues.