There is a question that has popped up in my head time and time again when people talk to me, and it has nothing to do with intelligence, education or experience and it is: “why do otherwise perfectly rational people continue making decisions they already know are making their lives harder?” I’m not talking about people who genuinely don’t know any different; I’m talking about people who keep putting their hand back into the same meat grinder, fully expecting a different outcome: whether it’s a job or relationship, yet they get the same end point each time. We’ve all met them and, if we’re honest, we’ve probably all been one ourselves – I’ll put my hand up here.
The woman who has mentally left the relationship years ago but still shares the same sofa every evening because leaving seems more frightening than staying. The man who spends every Sunday afternoon with that familiar knot in his stomach because Monday means another week in a job he stopped enjoying after the last change of management. The person who bought the yoga mat, the resistance bands, the walking shoes and even paid for the fitness app, only for every one of them to become expensive ornaments because tomorrow always seems a better day to start…
Then there is the aspiring business owner who has spent three years researching the perfect moment to launch, blissfully unaware that perfection has never once appeared on anyone’s start up calendar. There is the talented employee who reads every promotion advert, quietly knows they could do the job, then convinces themselves that someone else is probably more qualified. There is the smoker who can explain the dangers of smoking better than most doctors, the drinker who swears every Sunday night that this weekend will be different, the person who is in serious trouble but somehow never quite gets around to making the phone call for help, and the individual who dreams of travelling yet has become remarkably skilled at finding reasons why next year would make far more sense.
I sometimes describe all of this with an image that isn’t particularly elegant but may just resonate with some people; every morning, many willingly place their hand back into the meat grinder – we know exactly what it is going to do because it did precisely the same thing yesterday and the day before that, yet somehow we convince ourselves that today might be different. Spoiler: It rarely is.
The strange part is that we usually have wonderfully convincing explanations for why we’re doing it. We tell ourselves it’s because of the children, because of the mortgage, because jobs are difficult to find, because we’re getting older, because now isn’t the right time, because Christmas is coming, because summer holidays are booked, because we need just a little more confidence, because the economy is uncertain or because we’d rather wait until life settles down. Yup a lot of “becauses” and I’ve heard a lot of them over the past 2 years… Those reasons are not always invented because some are entirely genuine: raising children, paying bills and supporting families are very real responsibilities, the difficulty comes when sensible reasons quietly evolve into permanent hiding places.
Psychology has been studying this for decades, and one conclusion appears time and time again. Human beings are not naturally driven towards happiness; we are driven towards safety. Those are two very different objectives. Our brains are astonishingly good at keeping us alive, but they are considerably less interested in helping us become fulfilled. Thousands of years ago, uncertainty often meant danger; bottom line: walking into unfamiliar territory could result in becoming someone else’s lunch. The people who assumed everything would probably work out didn’t tend to pass their genes on quite so effectively – hence the ones who played it safe survived. Good for the human race, not so good for being content in life.
Although the world has changed beyond recognition, our brains haven’t entirely received the memo. Today, the tiger has been replaced by redundancy, divorce, public speaking, starting a business, applying for promotion or pressing the ‘publish’ button on something we’ve written. The brain often reacts to these modern uncertainties with exactly the same alarm system it once reserved for genuine predators.
That is why familiarity becomes so incredibly powerful, even when familiarity is making us miserable. An unhappy relationship is at least predictable. because you can almost predict how the arguments begin, how they end and roughly when they’ll happen. A dreadful job may leave you exhausted, undervalued and questioning your life choices, but you know where your desk is, who makes the terrible coffee, which meetings could have been emails, but you’ll get that monthly bank account top up. Predictable disappointment somehow feels safer than unpredictable possibility; it sounds irrational, yet it’s one of the most rational things our survival-driven brains ever do.
Behavioural economists have another wonderfully depressing concept called loss aversion, which simply means that losing something hurts us far more than gaining something of equal value pleases us. Leaving a relationship doesn’t initially feel like gaining freedom; it feels like losing security. Applying for a better job doesn’t first feel exciting; it feels like risking rejection. Starting a business doesn’t immediately represent opportunity; it represents the possibility of failure. Our brains keep adding up what might disappear while almost completely ignoring what might be waiting on the other side.
We are also extraordinary storytellers, particularly when the story allows us to remain exactly where we are. We tell ourselves that we’re simply being sensible, patient or realistic. We insist that we’ll act once we’ve saved a little more money, gained another qualification, lost a stone, waited until after the children finish school or after the next financial year. The problem is that life has an annoying habit of replacing one perfectly reasonable excuse with another. Once Christmas has passed, it’s your son’s birthday and you wouldn’t want to upset him would you. Once the children leave school, ageing parents need support or grand kids need looking after. Selling the family home if we split – where will I live. Spoiler: you’ll find a one bed place somewhere and then realise you never needed the other 3 bedrooms, 3 cars, 3 piece electric BBQ, 2 sitting rooms… If we wait for life to stop being complicated before making important decisions, we’ll be looking down at our funeral service.
One of the greatest tricks our minds ever perform is convincing us that courage arrives before action, but I don’t that it does. We imagine courageous people wake up overflowing with confidence, leap out of bed and embrace uncertainty with the enthusiasm of my old Lab spotting a tennis ball, but I suspect that the reality is rather less glamorous. Sometimes I’m just as frightened as everyone else can be; I just simply reached a point where I realised our veterans and innocent people were not getting the support they need and I needed to do what I can. For some of you, remaining exactly where you are may finally becomes more painful than taking the risk, but courage is rarely dramatic. It just sounds like it’s like a massive weight you lift at the gym after months of working out with a coach, but from my experience it’s much smaller: more often it looks like updating a CV after everyone else has gone to bed, making one awkward phone call you’ve rehearsed a dozen times, attending your first counselling session after months of anxiety, starting to exercise by walking around the block despite feeling embarrassed that your Christmas pudding is still showing on your hips 6 months later, joining the local yoga class despite not knowing anyone or turning up to meet someone you really really like even though your stomach is performing gymnastics because you’ve convinced yourself that no one likes you.
Confidence, contrary to popular belief, is almost never the starting point, but can be the reward for doing something that frightened you yesterday. Every time we keep a promise to ourselves, however small, our brain quietly collects another piece of evidence that perhaps we are more capable than we previously believed. Walk for fifteen minutes today and you’ve become someone who kept their word. Apply for one job and you’ve become someone who takes opportunities seriously. Have the difficult conversation and you’ve proved that discomfort is survivable. Confidence is built in exactly the same way a wall is built, one brick at a time – unfortunately, many of us stand in front of an empty field waiting instead of laying the first brick.
There is another uncomfortable truth that deserves mentioning. Sometimes we become attached to our own excuses because they protect us from accountability. As long as we never apply for the promotion, we never have to risk being rejected. As long as we never write the book, nobody can criticise it. As long as we never leave the relationship, we never have to discover whether life outside it would actually be better. In an odd way, doing nothing can feel emotionally safer because it allows us to preserve the comforting fantasy that everything will work out if we keep going. Trying removes the fantasy and replaces it with reality, and reality occasionally bruises the ego, so it’s easier to stay put.
I think this explains why people can remain in situations that outsiders find almost impossible to understand. Friends often ask, “Why doesn’t she just leave?” or “Why doesn’t he simply get another job?” The word ‘simply’ does an enormous amount of heavy lifting in those questions. From the outside, decisions frequently appear straightforward because we aren’t carrying the emotional weight that accompanies them such as a fear of loneliness, failure, regret, judgement, financial uncertainty, children, caring responsibilities, ageing parents, health concerns – decades of habit all become invisible to everyone except the person living them. That doesn’t mean they should remain trapped forever, but it does explain why change is rarely as easy as spectators imagine.
None of this means we should surrender to fear or accept that life is destined to become one long hamster wheel because it can be quite the opposite. Understanding why we stay stuck gives us a chance to interrupt the pattern. Perhaps the most useful question we can ask ourselves is not, “What if this goes wrong?” but, “What is staying exactly where I am already costing me?” That cost isn’t always measured in money; sometimes it’s measured in confidence that slowly erodes, opportunities quietly missed, friendships neglected, health that deteriorates from each takeaway or “ping” meal in front of a screan – resulting in literally years disappearing while we wait for a mythical moment called “the right time”.
I don’t believe most people are lazy or that they lack ambition; I think many of us have simply become remarkably good at confusing familiarity with safety and safety with happiness. I don’t think that they are the same thing: a cage can be perfectly safe, but nobody would mistake it for freedom.
Perhaps that is why I keep coming back to my rather unpleasant meat grinder analogy. Every single day we have a choice. We can continue placing our hand into the same machine, knowing exactly how much it will hurt because it has never once surprised us before, or we can accept the discomfort of pulling our hand away and learning how to use live differently. Neither option is completely painless; one, however, offers the possibility that next year won’t simply be a repeat of this one.
When I hear someone say, “It is what it is”, “One day I’ll do it,” or “I don’t want to give up” I always wonder whether what they really mean is “I’ll never do that”. Life has an irritating habit of moving far faster than we think it will. The years don’t announce their arrival; they simply accumulate and before long, tomorrow has become next year, next year has become a decade and the opportunity we were putting off has disappeared altogether.
Have we spend far too much of our lives searching for certainty when what we actually need is just enough courage to take the next step? Perhaps we don’t need to see the whole staircase, just enough conviction to climb the first step; it may feel terrifying, but it is still infinitely less painful than spending another decade wondering what might have happened had we finally stopped putting our hand back into the meat grinder.
Maybe we spend too much of our lives standing at the edge of our own personal chasms, demanding certainty before we’ll take the first step. We want guarantees that the new job will be better, that leaving the relationship will make us happier, that starting the business will succeed or that choosing a different path won’t end in regret. Yet life rarely works that way.
If any of you have watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when Indy reaches the final trial, you’ll remember: his father’s Grail diary gave him one simple clue:
“The Path of God. Only in the leap from the lion’s head will he prove his worth.”
Standing at what appears to be the edge of a bottomless abyss, there is no bridge, no visible path and certainly no certainty. Indy quietly realises, “It’s a leap of faith,” and steps into what looks like empty space. Only then does he discover the bridge had been there all along; it was simply invisible from where he was standing. I often wonder how many of us are doing exactly the opposite by refusing to take the first step because we can’t yet see the bridge, while continuing to place our hand back into the same meat grinder every single day because at least we know how that story ends.
How long will you postpone the life you want in exchange for the comfort of where you are today? If the opportunities, freedom and life you’re hoping for are already right in front of our eyes – you just need to find the courage to take that first step. Our community has quite a few members who have done this – if you need sign posting to someone who we believe can help, please reach out.
FAQs
Why do people stay in unhappy relationships?
People often remain because of familiarity, financial pressures, children, fear of loneliness, low self-belief, sunk-cost thinking, or uncertainty about what comes next. The known can feel psychologically safer than the unknown, even when it causes ongoing unhappiness.
What is loss aversion?
Loss aversion is a well-established concept in behavioural economics describing how people generally experience the pain of losses more intensely than the pleasure of equivalent gains. This can make change feel disproportionately risky.
Can courage be learned?
Yes. Research suggests courage grows through repeated experiences of successfully facing manageable challenges. Small, consistent actions build confidence far more effectively than waiting to “feel ready.”
Why do we make excuses even when we know they’re excuses?
Our brains often create rational explanations to reduce the discomfort of cognitive dissonance—the tension between what we know we should do and what we actually do. These explanations protect us from anxiety in the short term but can keep us stuck in the long term.
What is the first step towards meaningful change?
Focus on one small action rather than trying to solve your entire life at once. Momentum is often more valuable than motivation.
References
- Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow.
- Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk.
- Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
- Bandura, A. (1977). Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change.
- Gilbert, D. (2006). Stumbling on Happiness.
- Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2010). Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.
