Every Behavior Has Value
Why Beating Yourself Up Never Creates Lasting Change
People who come to me for coaching often arrive with a list of things they want to stop doing. Stop procrastinating. Stop overcommitting. Stop people-pleasing. Stop leaving things until the last minute. Stop getting overwhelmed. Stop chasing perfection. The list goes on and on. Some of us have spent years trying to ‘fix’ these behaviors, with planners, productivity tools and apps; they’ve watched YouTube videos and read self-help books. Many have invested good money in these strategies. And yet despite all that effort, the same patterns keep showing up.
Why?
Because most attempts at change focus on behavior…but what if the behavior itself is not actually the problem?
Every behavior exists for a reason
One of the most important things I have learned through working with people is that every behavior has value, including the ones we don’t like, the ones that make our lives harder, and those we want to change. But our behaviors develop for a reason. Over-committing can come about because we want others to like us and find us useful; it can make us feel important. People-pleasing can develop in children who feel that parental love is conditional in some way, so they prioritize pleasing others’ needs over their own. Avoidance and perfectionism can help us avoid failure, fear or embarrassment.
Human beings do not develop behaviors randomly. We repeat behaviors because they meet a need. They help us cope, survive difficult situations, navigate relationships, school, work and / or family expectations.
Because in that moment they have value for us.
The problem is that many of us continue using these coping strategies, designed for a different stage of life, long after those behaviors no longer serve us.
The hidden question beneath every behavior
When clients first come to me for coaching, they ask: ‘How do I stop doing this?’ But I am more interested in these questions:
What is this behavior doing for you?
What value does this behavior have for you?
Is there another behavior that has more value for you NOW?
Let's take procrastination as an example. Many people find their procrastination to be challenging. They feel lazy and undisciplined, or that they have poor time management. But procrastination does something useful: it helps us avoid anxiety and the discomfort of starting something we are not confident about, and protects us from the possibility of failure.
We start procrastinating out of self-preservation, but then it becomes a habit; a way we approach all tasks. And task paralysis does not serve us in the workplace, or at college, or at home, or in a million other spaces.
overcoming the behavior - willpower doesn’t work
The first step is to stop feeling guilty about the behavior - in this case procrastination - and recognize that at one point it served us well. We appreciate it, and recognize it for the value it brings to our lives.
The next step is to explore - with curiosity, and a genuinely open mind - if it still serves us in the same way. Does it still have value for us?
If the answer is no, it is no longer serving us to procrastinate, then the final step is to find another behavior to replace it that’s healthier for us and serves us better.
Without that last part, we are simply trying to remove something from our lives without replacing what it was giving us. And that rarely works. Willpower on its own is rarely enough to drive meaningful change. If willpower were as powerful as we want it to be, there would be no need for positive parenting classes, student study guides, GLP-1 medication or drug or alcohol rehab centers; we’d all be rich, with straight As and a best-selling novel behind us. There would be no need for life coaching! To be successful, willpower has to be combined with action; in this case, the introduction of new behavior patterns.
But if a behavior is protecting you from something; if it’s helping you feel safe, your brain will not give it up easily.
Trying to force yourself to change without understanding the underlying need is like pulling weeds without removing the roots. And the weeds will keep coming back.
Letting go of behaviors that no longer serve you
One of my favorite ideas in coaching is that you can appreciate a behavior without keeping it. You can recognize that perfectionism helped you achieve success and still decide that it is costing you too much.
You can acknowledge that people-pleasing once protected important relationships, and still decide that it is exhausting you.
You can thank a behavior for the role it played in your life, and then let it go.
Many of us are carrying patterns that made sense ten, 20 or even 30 years ago. The challenge is that we are still blindly following where those behaviors take us instead of asking whether they still align with the life we want today.
Ultimately, lasting change happens when we discover something more valuable than the old behavior; when we operate with authenticity.
→ You will not stop people-pleasing because someone tells you to. But you can stop when the things you want to do become more valuable than approval.
→ You will not stop overcommitting because you buy a new planner. But you can stop when peace becomes more valuable than proving yourself.
That is why coaching is not simply about strategies and tools. Those things are helpful, but real transformation happens when you understand why you behave the way you do, what needs those behaviors have been meeting and what you genuinely value now.
3 steps to SUCCESS
Recognize the behavior and what it gives you. See its value. Interrogate this fully. Make a list of all the ways in which it benefits you, what feelings it helps you achieve or suppress, and the need it’s meeting. Ask yourself, without emotion and with genuine curiosity, if it is still valuable to you.
With that same detachment and curiosity, ask yourself what you value now. Achievement? Growth? Balance? Whatever it is - and there is no right or wrong answer to how you want your authentic life to look - write down as many details as you can. If you pursued life with this new value in mind, what would life look like? What would be different? And how would that feel?
Ask yourself these questions: ‘What would someone who values this do today?’ ‘What is the smallest possible step I can take today towards living this new life and creating a new behavior pattern?’ If I were building my life around what matters most to me now, what would I do next? The answer may be small, but it is where your change begins.
Need help with this? Book a free 30-minute session with me here!
