We need to talk about willingness.
Have you noticed how often people talk about growth, healing, or self-improvement? Every second post on social media sells you something about growth or tells you how to heal a part of you. There’s a multitude of apps, lifestyle programs, YouTube videos all designed to help you grow or heal.
And that’s lovely.
But most of these conversations are “safe” and purely theoretical. There’s a lot of emphasis on awareness, insight, and understanding. And a lot of these apps and programs fail.
Because there’s a part that’s left out.
Willingness.
Research shows insight and intention alone do not reliably produce behaviour change.
Change doesn’t begin with insight. It doesn’t begin with pain, or intention, or motivation.
It begins with willingness.
What People Mistake For Willingness
I talk to a lot of people, and I observe. Good people, desperate for change in their lives, take on countless self-help programs, books, apps. And they keep failing, and coming back to the question “what’s wrong with me?”. I myself went through cycles of intense motivation to make a change, only to come up short very shortly afterwards.
Because we mistake insight, awareness, motivation and good intentions, for willingness to change. We confuse understanding with action. Understanding the situation may feel like “change”, but that doesn’t guarantee change. So you may know what the problem is and feel very motivated to fix it. You may fully intent to act. And nothing changes.
The sense of progress from being able to explain your patterns (triggers, history, trauma) is psychological. There is a feeling of “working on it”, because it can be expressed clearly. But insight without follow-through is just a holding pattern: you’re rehearsing the narrative over and over, without actually altering the behaviours that keep your life the same.
Research on cognitive avoidance and cognitive reassurance indicates that humans use explanation as a comfort mechanism. We name, understand and analyse the problem, and it reduces the emotional discomfort – but it doesn’t reduce the behaviour that created the discomfort originally. And because we’re human and we want things to be “okay”, we stop pushing the issue once we’ve achieved the reduction in discomfort. Unfortunately the underlying pattern is still there, and will stay there, until real action interrupts it.
Willingness is the thing that takes you from the temporary relief of talking, to the peace that comes from doing the uncomfortable but necessary work. Sounds counterintuitive, sure. But nothing else has worked so far, right? So hear me out.
Willingness doesn’t require you to be “ready” or for the conditions to be “right”. It simply asks: are you prepared to take the next step, even if it feels difficult, risky or unfamiliar?
Why The Question Gets Avoided
Change is uncomfortable.
It doesn’t only threaten your habits, it threatens your identity (that’s been carefully built around trauma or suffering), the control you have over the issues, and the relative safety of your current life framework. It’s easier to stay in familiar pain, than to risk unfamiliar peace. Acting on new insights may risk you losing the version of yourself you know so well.
Research on loss aversion and status quo bias shows that humans disproportionately weigh potential losses over gains, even when the gain is objectively positive.
It’s purposely omitted, because doubting, insecure, depressed people consume more – so for as long as you can be trapped in a state of “good intentions” and lured forward with the carrot of “healing and self-improvement” on a stick, developers and manufacturers can keep selling you things. Unfortunately, we keep falling for it.
So we negotiate with reality, instead of just taking the leap. We wait for “the right moment” or bargain with ourselves “I’ll start tomorrow”. We rely on external validations and soothe our conscience with “I need to be ready” or “I just need to think about it some more”. But, each mental delay reinforces the old pattern. Willingness interrupts this cycle.
Willingness is the commitment to move forward, despite the discomfort, risk or uncertainty.
Willingness In Real Life
The clearest, and most painful place you can see the gap between desire and willingness is in relationships. How often do you hear people say they want better communication, less conflict, more intimacy? How often do you see those same people alter their behaviour, to accommodate those things? Improving a relationship is less about motivation or understanding, and far more about consistently changing interaction patterns. It’s entirely true to love someone deeply, and still not be willing to act differently.
It is painful, definitely! But it’s far more painful to stay in that place of arguments and misunderstandings, isn’t it?
Recovery frameworks used in mental health, like Behavioural Activation and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) emphasise that action comes before complete readiness: you don’t wait to feel motivated. You take steps, however small, towards healthier patterns.
A lot of therapists indulge their patients in talking about problems, over and over. I’ve heard so many people complain that they’ve been in therapy for years, but nothing’s changed. Because explanation or insight alone (like naming triggers or understanding trauma) doesn’t interrupt cycles of avoidance or maladaptive behaviour. You can find any justification for avoidant or specific behaviours online. But those justifications aren’t going to break the cycle – they’re just going to keep you stuck in one place.
Willingness expects you to act, even if it feels unfair, uncertain, or painful.
What "Yes" Actually Looks Like
So what does it mean to say “Yes”?
It’s rarely dramatic or glamorous.
Research on habit formation (it takes 21 days to form a new habit) and behavioural activations show that small, repeated actions, carried out consistently, produce lasting change. Willingness often looks like plain old consistency: making your bed, brushing your teeth, showing up at work, going to the gym, sweeping the apartment, and doing all of it again tomorrow.
There’s no immediate rewards, and that’s not why you’re doing it. In a world that demands instant gratification, we tend to give up on consistency after a few days, and then complain that nothing’s changed. Saying “yes” to willingness means that you keep doing it even if there’s no immediate change after three days.
Because it’s not about emotional intensity or perfection. It’s simply about stopping a harmful behaviour, before you’ve found a perfect replacement. Action precedes results and committing to a process without any guarantees is how real change manifests, long before it becomes outwardly visible or gratifying.
You know the process they keep telling you to trust? It’s this one.
And If You Say "No"?
Saying “no” to willingness looks deceptively productive. You have better language to explain what’s wrong. You can refine your explanation and analyse past mistakes expertly, and infinitely. You’re waiting for motivation, validation or the “right moment”, and for a casual observer it looks like you’re “working on it” – after all, you’re talking about it, right? You’re showing up, and you look “fine” – but fine is just another word for “functionally depressed”. You’re still stuck, going nowhere slowly.
This is called the contemplation trap by Behavioural Science. You stay mentally engaged, without transitioning to actions. Insight alone doesn’t alter the neural pathways that underlie behaviour, so the patterns persist.
The only way to break the loop is to choose action over argument, interruption over rehearsal, and discomfort over comfort.
It’s easier to argue, isn’t it? Someone makes a statement and you’re already feeling low and guilty, so you immediately jump to defense, even if the statement wasn’t about you. An observation on their part becomes a list of reasons why you can’t: can’t work out because you don’t have a gym membership. Can’t do some reading because there’s guests over. Can’t work on the overdue project because you’re tired. The answers are rehearsed, and they keep you in your comfort zone – even if your comfort zone is slowly killing you.
Are You Willing To Change?
Willingness isn’t insight, motivation or readiness. It is action.
It shows up in what you do, not what you say or think.
It requires repetition, discomfort and commitment without guarantees.
Behaviour changes only follow when willingness is present. Understanding is good to have, but it’s not the catalyst. Change begins with action. That is the place where growth actually starts.
Close your eyes and jump. It doesn’t matter if you’re ready. It doesn’t matter if it’s messy, or chaotic. It doesn’t matter if you make mistakes.
If you want change or healing in your life, your circumstance, your mental health – ask the difficult question.
Change starts the moment action replaces argument.
-Nova
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