Most of us say we want change. Few of us welcome it.
When change begins, it rarely registers at first. The “noise” level is low. It feels distant, theoretical, optional. So, we choose to ignore it. But change is already underway.
As the noise increases, so does discomfort. We question whether change is necessary. We complain. We look for exceptions. We plead for delay. When those efforts fail, we withdraw. We sulk. Only eventually do we begin to accept what has already been set in motion.
Change rarely disrupts systems alone. It disrupts identity, certainty, and routine. Even when change is necessary or beneficial it carries emotional weight. The resistance we feel is not simply strategic disagreement; it is often a response to perceived loss.
This progression is not unlike the arc described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her work with dying individuals who were processing their own grief. When faced with loss, humans move through denial, anger, bargaining, and eventual acceptance. Change, even when it is not tragic, carries its own form of loss, whether loss of familiarity, control, or identity. Our resistance is often less about strategy and more about disruption to what felt stable.
Change triggers similar emotional dynamics and the change adoption curve reflects this familiar progression: ignore, complain, plead, sulk, accept.
What’s striking is not that the pattern exists, it’s that we repeat it. Over and over again. Each time acting as though resistance will somehow alter inevitability.
We cannot control whether change happens. We can only influence how long we spend resisting it.
The real variable is not the change itself, but the speed of our acceptance.
Change will come. The question is how much energy we expend fighting what was never ours to prevent.
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Building on the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying (1969)
