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Many of us resist change. We see ourselves as an iPhone person or an Android person, we stick with the same doctor or therapist even though we're moderately dissatisfied, we keep the same hairstyle or color, and we're rocked when changes get foisted upon us at work.

We Get Better at Change When We're More Nimble

When we become more nimble, creative, fluid, and resourceful, we get better at both pursuing change and responding when it's thrust on us.

Nimbleness can come from a variety of strategies, including self-reflection, challenging our thinking, playfulness, and outwitting systems that force unwanted disruptions on us.

1. Audit Your Patterns, Kindly

Gretchen Rubin quotes advice that her father gave her, "If you think it might be time to make a change, you probably should've made that change six months ago." She says she's found this true in her work and personal life.

Is that your experience? When you eventually make a change, either because you decide to or have to, do you usually regret not doing it earlier?

Even if your first move away from a dissatisfying situation isn't perfect, it's often a necessary step on the way to a better one.

Understanding the very human tendency to delay change can free you to make an imperfect first move sooner. Your attitude to your foibles is key. Don't personalize what's universally relatable, just factor it in.

2. Make Change Routine

One way to make change less effortful is to turn it into a routine. For example, every month or every quarter, make a new change in your life, whether that's switching your internet provider, doing your weekly grocery shop at a chain you've never been to, or buying a different brand of jeans.

"Switching costs" are real, but we can minimize the hassle by having a routine of change. We can get ourselves used to experiencing switching costs at a frequency that's manageable to us.

Making a routine out of anything tends to reduce the effort it takes. By choosing your own interval and enacting one change when that interval rolls around, you stop yourself from being someone who never changes anything.

3. Try Zany Skill-Building Projects

I recently went down a rabbit hole of watching social media videos by a frugal guy who (almost) never buys groceries but keeps his food budget similar to the cost of cooking with various low-cost finds from local restaurants and by hacking and stacking deals (no affiliation).

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While it might seem like this would be a recipe for a terrible diet, taking on challenges like this for short periods can be a way to build your resilience. On the surface, you might learn about great value options at hole-in-the-wall restaurants or how to maximize deals from chains and apps. On a deeper level, you build your resourcefulness. You counter the tendency many of us have to walk past good opportunities because we're blind to them. You explore different parts of your neighborhood.

There are many similar projects you could try, like no-spend or no-car weeks. Or, no-gym/no-run weeks (you get the same workout other ways), or weekends with no entertainment from the last 20 years (retro games, shows, music, etc.).

These skill-building projects facilitate change, but with a focus that's more fun.

4. Use Clarifying Questions to Overcome Your Cognitive Biases

We can counteract cognitive biases like status quo bias, loss aversion, or the sunk cost fallacy through particular techniques. For example, you can ask yourself:

"If $300 were put in my hand right now if I switched my internet provider, rather than saving that amount over the next 12 months, would I do it?"

"If I were given $20 to spend on anything I wanted, would I spend it on this subscription I let auto-renew, or something else?"

You can easily ask your favorite AI tool for questions aimed at overcoming a particular bias. Most of these questions boil down to putting yourself in the mindset of making fresh choices with a clean slate, as if you hadn't already made your existing ones.

5. Outwit Changes You Didn't Choose

Especially in work contexts, we often have changes foisted upon us. These can be draining, particularly when you had no say in them and they make your life harder for no obvious upside. But we can treat these like a quest in which new constraints force creativity, sometimes in ways that benefit us.

You'll often find that the creativity you need to employ to overcome a worse situation can be repurposed to your benefit. For example, you might have to work around new rules or terms, or find a way to jump through more hoops than you used to, to do the same thing as before. The creativity you're forced to find can often be useful in other spheres.

Adverse changes don't always have a silver lining, but at least sometimes, we can create one.

Make Change More Playful

Resistance to change is very human. There's a reason so many of us can relate to the wisdom shared by Gretchen Rubin's father. Sometimes it takes us a while to register the need for change. Often, it takes much, much longer to have the bandwidth to actually pursue it. Instead of obsessing about which changes to prioritize, we can take a more playful approach. We can experiment with actions, routines, and mindsets that help us become more resourceful and resilient. We can practice being more fluid, and less tied to our identity as a person loyal to a tech brand or a hair color.

We don't need to trick ourselves into believing that forced changes that are hard and inconvenient are good for us or fair. However, we can get better at responding to them with creativity. We can take on the challenge of outwitting systems that lock down our loyalty or weigh down our spirit.

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