Why, despite previous failures, do people keep making efforts to change themselves?

Attempts to change ourselves can provide initial rewards even when they are unsuccessful.

We often feel control and optimism at the early stages of a diet or other self-modification effort.

Unrealistic expectations about

• how easy it will be to change;
• how fast changes will happen;
  
• our likely amount of change; and
  
• the presumed benefits we will receive from change,
  

tend to block us from awareness and recognition of our prior failures.

In order to avoid the overconfidence and false hope that will eventually lead to failure and distress, we need to be able to tell the difference between self-change goals that are probable and self-change goals that are impossible.

The article below discusses this concept in detail.

The False Hope Syndrome:
Unrealistic Expectations
of Self-change.

  by J. Polivy
Dept of Psychology, University of Toronto
International Journal of Obesity

Introduction

Which of us has not attempted to change something about ourselves? Whether we make a New Year’s resolution, or go on a diet to lose some of those excess pounds, or try to quit smoking, or simply strive to improve our golf swings, we begin each new endeavor with high hopes of how successful we will be, and of the positive impact the alteration will have on our lives.

Some of these self-change efforts work … we all know someone who has lost weight, given up coffee or taken up jogging. This convinces us that it is possible to alter many of our behaviors, or even aspects of ourselves, and that our new self will be better, more popular, successful or attractive; and indeed, when we do attempt to change, we often meet with some success, at least initially.

We lose a few pounds on a new diet, or manage to spend more time on our studying the first week we try to improve our work habits, or hit a few good shots in 18 holes of golf following a lesson. Unfortunately, all too often, these early successes are followed by “relapses” to our previous state when boredom or difficulty make it harder to persist at our self-change effort. Moreover, the successes we...

We live in a culture that bombards us with the message that if you want something badly enough, work at it hard enough, wait long enough and focus on it to the exclusion of just about everything, ultimately your dreams will come true.

We love stories of extraordinary accomplishments that involve people who never gave up.  Motivational speakers and self-help books frequently use them as examples.

But is this philosophy really right for everyone?   Mental health experts say that sometimes there comes a time in life when giving up on a dream is the psychologically healthy thing to do.

Our world is constantly pushing us to do better, be more, achieve greater.  So, it’s no surprise that many of the expectations we place on ourselves are far too high.

Although remarkable accomplishments do happen, they are not the norm.  When people think it IS the norm, they set unrealistic expectations for themselves, and end up with depression and anxiety when they fail to achieve them.

We all hold unrealistic expectations.  It’s part of the human experience.  In fact, one of the biggest unrealistic expectation is that people shouldn’t have unrealistic expectations.   But that doesn’t mean that unrealistic expectations are healthy.

Many people pursue a dream in order to fill a gap in their own self-worth, and think that achieving a goal will make them happy, even when they don’t enjoy the journey toward it. 

An editorial in the British Medical Journal said that much of life’s pain stems from the gap between people’s Unrealistic Dreams and Reality.

Unrealistic expectations set us up for failure.  When we fall short, we draw false conclusions, feel negative feelings and act in negative ways. Rather than trying to capture youthful dreams, adults should reassess them to figure out which dreams to abandon and which ones to revise.

Everything isn’t always possible, and sometimes the route to happiness is to abandon former dreams. As W.C. Fields once said: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.  Then quit.  There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.”

The first step in relinquishing unrealistic expectations is being able to spot them.  Sometimes this isn’t easy, especially if we’ve had them for years.

After we identify our expectations, we need to decide which are unrealistic, and let those go.

Another difficulty in letting unrealistic expectations go is that we think we SHOULD have them. We believe it’s helpful to set high standards for ourselves, and that having lofty expectations will motivate and inspire us to accomplish things.

Experts agree that it’s important to grieve after shelving a dream, but that it is also helpful to replace that old dream with another meaningful goal that is more achievable. Our goals need to be something that we can personally accomplish.  Our goals should be realistic and based on what we really want.  ...