Change Is Hard. Your Brain Is Wired That Way.

Why We Resist, And Why That’s Normal

A new sustainability policy. A surprise merger. A fresh line manager who swaps out the sacred office rituals (RIP Friday bacon rolls) for wellbeing check-ins and weekly KPIs.

Cue groans, eye-rolls, and low-level existential panic.

Here’s the deal: change feels hard because your brain is doing its job.

Neuroscience shows that our brains are prediction machines. As Lisa Feldman Barrett explains, the brain doesn’t just react to the world, it predicts it. It likes the familiar because familiarity saves energy. The known = safe. The unknown? Potential threat.

So when something shifts, new policy, new process, new person, your brain lights up like a Christmas tree in the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for detecting danger. The result? Anxiety, resistance, maybe a dramatic sigh or two.

---

The Biology of Habit and Homeostasis

Dr. Joe Dispenza explains that by the time we're in adulthood, around 95% of what we do is governed by subconscious habits. These habits are coded into neurological loops that let us function efficiently — brushing teeth, driving to work, avoiding that one passive-aggressive reply-all colleague.

Change disrupts these loops.

Suddenly, you’re being asked to think again. And your brain, being the lazy genius it is, resists the extra effort. It wants to return to what neuroscientists call homeostasis — a state of neural and physiological balance.

But balance isn’t the same as progress. And growth always requires a bit of disorientation first.

---

Neuroplasticity: Your Brain Can Learn to Love the New

Here’s the good news: your brain is plastic. Not in a Tupperware way, in a miraculous, shape-shifting, rewiring kind of way.

Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to form new connections, prune old ones, and literally reconfigure itself in response to new experiences.

That means:

• You can become more comfortable with ambiguity

• You can unlearn the instinct to panic when the status quo shifts

• You can retrain your brain to see change as challenge rather than threat

This doesn’t happen overnight. It takes repetition, reflection, and psychologically safe environments that activate the prefrontal cortex (your decision-making HQ) rather than just the threat-detecting amygdala.

Keep on repeating it until the neural pathway hard wires in

What Helps? (Spoiler: Not Just Another Memo)

1. Acknowledge the Brain's Reality

   • Stop telling people "just get on with it." Start naming the discomfort as normal.

2. Create Tiny Habits

   • BJ Fogg’s research shows that change sticks when it's small, specific, and rewarding. Think nudges, not overhauls.

3. Lead with Empathy, Not Fear

   • Leaders who regulate their own emotional responses model safety. This helps shift teams from reactivity to curiosity.

4. Use Tools Like NIMM

   • The NeuroInclusive Maturity Model (NIMM) helps organisations understand the neurobiology of change, and how to make it inclusive, sustainable, and repeatable.

Whether you're greening your supply chain or rolling out a new leadership framework, understanding the brain helps you bring people with you.

---

Final Thought

Change isn’t comfortable. It’s not supposed to be. But it is possible — and it becomes powerful when we stop fighting our biology and start working with it.

Your brain is changeable. So is your culture.

And that’s the most hopeful science we’ve got.