Have you ever decided to make a healthy change — cut back on the wine, swap the late-night snacking, start moving more — and found that within days all you could think about was the thing you'd given up? You're not weak-willed. You're just focusing on one side of the equation.
I want to share a small, slightly embarrassing story from a weekend away that completely changed how I coach people through change. Because coping with change isn't really about discipline at all. It's about where you point your attention.
Why change so often feels like loss
Change is the only constant in life. We know this intellectually, and yet almost all of us meet it with some resistance — a reluctance to let go of what we know and a quiet fear of the unknown. The irony is that the unknown is precisely where we grow. It's where we become our best selves. And the future is unknown to everyone, equally. None of us gets a preview.
What we can control is how we perceive what's happening, and the decisions we make moment by moment. Children are brilliant at this. Adults tend to get attached to our comforts and stuck in the past, and that attachment is what makes coping with change feel so much harder than it needs to.
The night I couldn't stop thinking about my own bed
I recently had a long weekend away with my son Ollie, visiting my parents. He hadn't seen them in about six months, so it was a lovely reunion. When I asked him afterwards what he'd liked best, he said being with his ma and pa, seeing the dog, and doing all the things he doesn't normally get to do at home. He'd embraced the variability. Children are good like that.
Me? The first night, the bed wasn't as comfortable as my own. And I fixated on it. I lay there cataloguing what I was missing instead of noticing what I'd gained. Classic.
Then it clicked. I hadn't lost comfort at all. Comfort had simply changed form. I'd gained the warmth of being with my parents in the house I grew up in. I'd gained my mum's home cooking — different flavours, different textures, genuinely soul-warming food I hadn't eaten in ages. I'd gained time with my son. Nothing was missing. The comfort had just moved from the mattress to the people.
The moment I saw that, I was present. Grateful. Properly there for the rest of the weekend.
How this plays out when you're trying to get healthier
Here's why this matters for your health. When we set out to make healthy changes, we almost always frame them as subtraction. I'm giving up alcohol. I'm cutting out the afternoon chocolate. No more Friday takeaway. We fix our attention on the loss — and the more we stare at what's missing, the more we want it.
The reframe is simple but it takes a bit of honest thinking: don't ask what you're giving up. Ask what that thing was actually giving you, and what new form that benefit could take.
Take alcohol. Alcohol is just a substance. The question is what it was doing for you. For most people, it's relaxation — a way to shift gears at the end of the day. So the real task isn't white-knuckling your way past the wine. It's finding something else that genuinely relaxes you, so the benefit transforms rather than disappears.
Finding a replacement that actually works for you
This is where generic advice falls over. Mindfulness is often the answer, but mindfulness doesn't have to mean sitting cross-legged with an app. It means being fully present — your mind occupied by what you're doing rather than wandering off.
So ask yourself: what activity brings me my full presence? What am I doing when I'm genuinely absorbed and not reaching for my phone?
For some people it's doodling. There's research suggesting that absorbing, creative activities like this support cognitive health as we age — I'd treat the strength of that link as promising rather than settled, but the mental health benefits of being properly absorbed in something are well recognised. For me, doodling does nothing. Researching and recording a podcast episode, though? That's when I'm completely present. I'm thinking, writing, working out how to get an idea across to you. Same mechanism, different form.
Whatever yours is, that's your replacement. And once you've found it, shift your focus onto what it's giving you. Using the alcohol example again: you're gaining presence and calm, you're sparing your body the detoxification workload, you're no longer losing minerals and vitamins to processing it, and you're not drinking calories either — alcohol carries around seven calories per gram, which adds up quickly across a week regardless of what you mix it with. Your body gets to spend its resources on repair instead of clean-up.
Balance the ledger before you decide how you feel
Every change has pros and cons. On that first night away, I was looking only at the cons. When I deliberately balanced the equation — what's genuinely good about this? — the whole weekend shifted.
You can do this with any change you're navigating, in health or otherwise. Write two columns. Fill both honestly. Most of us are expert at one and lazy about the other. Then ask the transformation question: where has this gone, rather than what have I lost?
Key takeaways
- Resistance to change usually comes from focusing on one side of the equation — what's being given up.
- Nothing is truly lost in a change; benefits transform into a different form. Your job is to find where they went.
- Before dropping a habit, identify what it was giving you — relaxation, reward, connection — then find a replacement that delivers the same thing.
- Presence is personal. Choose an absorbing activity you actually enjoy, not the one someone told you to do.
- Deliberately list the genuine gains of a change, not just the losses, before judging how you feel about it.
- Gratitude for what's in front of you right now is what moves you from resisting change to working with it.
This is the heart of how I work with people at me&my wellness. Health isn't a list of things to renounce — it's a set of needs you're already meeting somehow, and the work is finding better forms to meet them in. When we look at nutrition, movement, sleep and mindset together, change stops feeling like deprivation and starts feeling like an upgrade. That's a much more sustainable place to build from.
Want to go deeper on this? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Anthony at meandmywellness.com.au