Habits & the Mind · 2026
Was That a Thought or Thunk?
Why change is so hard, and the formula for what has to beat the resistance.
What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind.
~ Attributed to the Buddha
This article started with a video. Back in 2025 I was watching one about change, and a man in it, I can’t for the life of me remember his name, got into something called the Law of Sustainment. That’s why this article happened.
It’s this theory basically that your brain will protect a negative familiar pattern over a positive outcome if the pattern has been repeated long enough to be mistaken as your identity.
It got me thinking back to my coaching school and the concept of neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to rewire itself.
Whatever you do or think over and over, the brain builds a stronger path for, like the worn track across a lawn where everybody cuts the corner. The paths you stop using grow over. It cuts both ways: it’s how a pattern digs in, and it’s why a pattern can be changed.
The problem is, that it is easier to say and agree with than do......if we all know that negative thoughts cause so many problems in our lives why the heck won’t we just change and stop it?
This article is a dig into what it really takes to overcome a pattern.
Before you read on......grab a pen and some paper. A few spots in here ask you something, and the answers are worth writing down. And for those of you who just heard a voice go off that said ‘don’t worry I’ll remember’......definitely grab that pen.
WHY CHANGE IS HARD
As I do with all my articles, I took my thoughts to Leo in Claude and we went and did the research on what's already out there.
We started our dig with this formula for change I had heard about almost 20 years ago. The water is murky on where the original came from......I got a version at a Landmark Education seminar and heard it again when I was taking my coaching classes.
Leo came back with a ball of confusion.
The original letters: A is the level of dissatisfaction with the status quo, B is a clear or understood desired state, D is practical first steps toward that desired state, and X is the cost of changing.
A × B × D has to be bigger than X for change to happen.
Everyone we found who wrote about the formula pointed at somebody else. ✱1a The credit goes back to David Gleicher, who worked at the consulting firm Arthur D. Little in the early 1960s.
✱2 In 1969 Beckhard had an earlier version without the “greater than” in it. We only know that from a writer in 1992. ✱3 In 1971 there was a training program that Elaine Dickson pointed at later.
In 1975 Richard Beckhard wrote the formula up and said it was Gleicher’s. He and a co-author said the same thing in their 1977 book. In 1982 Dickson gave it to Beckhard and pointed at that 1971 program, and Wikipedia’s article on the formula is where I found that. In 1987 the second edition of the book dropped Gleicher’s name.
✱1b By 1990 the consulting firm Dannemiller Tyson had the one most people use now: dissatisfaction times vision times first steps is bigger than resistance. Dannemiller and Jacobs published it in 1992. Cady added an S later.
✱1c In 2014 Barry Stein passed on, personally, the story that it started on a blackboard. ✱4 In 2016 Mark Nestle wrote RC, the only place I found anyone doing that. In 2020 Pataki and Pádár reported the 1992 writer’s account of the 1969 version. ✱5 In 2021 Fred Nickols wrote it as V + D + F > R, said he didn’t think it could be measured, and called it a recipe.
So for this article I went with the most effective version of the formula.
Mine......
D+V+FS>RC
That’s the best formula, and I argue that it IS a formula NOT a recipe: the level of (D) disgust with how it is PLUS a powerful (V) vision of how you want it to be PLUS clear and achievable (FS) first steps will overcome (RC) the natural resistance in the human brain to changing something.
Now let’s break it down a bit:
Disgust
✱6 In a review after 35 years of goal research, the authors wrote that people with high goals produce more "because they are dissatisfied with less."
Dissatisfied isn't enough. I think it takes more. “Absolutely not another day like that ever again!” kind of more. When you get there then real change can happen as we have a lot of tolerance for how things have been going in life. We even get something out of it. More on that further down.
I think fixed ways of being and habits that don't really work are some of the most important things to take on if you really want to change your life. This isn’t about shaming yourself and it isn’t about blame. ✱7 It isn’t about lying to yourself either or saying something that you do not yet believe. ✱8
For me dissatisfied just sits too close to ‘it’s fine’ or ‘I’m ok’ or ‘it could be worse’......So I say that we need to be disgusted in order to take a new action......or we just keep on being dissatisfied and not motivated enough to change the thing.
The ‘disgusted’ part is really about being honest. If you’re not happy and it’s been going on for too long then get disgusted at how things are......the broken relationships, the way it feels to wake up and who you see when brushing your teeth.
Vision
It has to be a clear vision or picture, not a general would be nice someday maybe kind. Start with what you want it for, not what it looks like......if nobody was watching, which way would you point this part of your life? Then walk through the morning after it's true. You wake up and it's real. Who's in the room? What are they saying, and what are you saying back? Feel your body before you even get out of bed, your chest, your shoulders, your breath. Write it like you're standing in it right now, so the picture has a body in it.
✱9 When people stood in front of a virtual mirror and saw themselves aged, they put more than twice as much toward the future, $172 against $80 out of a made-up $1,000. The only difference was that one group could see who they were saving for, and it was themselves. That's why your picture has to be yours, with you in it.
Last, give it a number from zero to ten on how much you want it. A lot of us say five, because five is settling for the current reality. So add two. Ask yourself why not a seven, what's standing in the way, because that's usually where the real vision shows up.
First Steps
Disgust and a vision of where you want to be still leave you standing at the starting line, and that's why "practical first steps" have been in the formula since Beckhard wrote it up in 1975.
The thing about a first step is it shrinks the whole mess down to something small enough that it's no big deal, it's all that needs to be done for today, and you start thinking well I can do at least that.
✱10 Here's what a first step does. A group of kids who were struggling with arithmetic and had lost interest were given the same subtraction work. Some were asked to do six pages each session. Others were asked to finish all 42 pages by the end of the seventh session. The kids with the six-page goal made fast progress and got good at it. The far-off goal did nothing. That's all a first step is: a goal close enough that you can see the end of it.
Resistance to Change
“All new ideas at first are rejected for no other reason than being new.”
~ Author unknown
Have you ever caught yourself saying something to the effect of, “Why do I always do that!” Or wondered why you perhaps shut down, go quiet or freeze up when you really, really, really have something to say and then your mouth betrays you?
Humans push back on changing anything......it’s built right in.
Here’s what some of the research said about why we push back:
✱11 Resistance has its own pull. Once a habit is formed, the setting triggers it without your goal even in the room, and it doesn’t shift when your goals do, so wanting to change isn’t enough......it has to be overcome.
It’s the same reason connecting with your partner again after things have gone stale doesn’t get better just because you want it to......the old way is the groove, and it keeps pulling you back in.
✱13 If you are more committed to being right and being safe than you are to being connected with your partner, then no amount of talking will shift how it is and where you are at.
THE JHOLT
Think of a typical 40-year-old guy's bad day, the normal......wife's not talking and he doesn't know why, his daughter suddenly hates him and all he can think is it's her hormones again, the boss is always on his back and the damned neighbour parked too close to the driveway again......that kind of day.
Sometimes in life things happen, it's true, but many times if they are only happening to us and on repeat it's worth looking into why. Not everyone has that day every day and some do. There are reasons. What's going on in our head before we even get out of bed is a big part of it.
It's more about realizing that the same things keep happening in all of our relationships or an area of importance. We may have asked many times, ‘why is it like this?’ Shrugged it off as 'it's normal' but inside we know it can and should be better. Then when the chance to have a conversation go differently comes up we find ourselves having the same argument again and nothing changes. That's the stuff I am saying we need to run through the formula for change. And often it needs something outside of us to help do it.
D+V+FS>RC
Grab a notebook and find somewhere alone for a few moments. Then go through the formula for change. Pick one thing in your life that you want to be better. Answer the following questions.
1. What is something in your life that you have been tolerating and have had enough of? Make sure to write it down in the words you use on the inside. Make sure you are close to or at disgusted level with the situation.
2. What would it look like if it were the way you want it to be instead? Make it a picture you can see: who is there, what is being said, how you feel when you wake up. Make it powerful enough that you want it more than you want to stay where you are.
3. What is one clear first step you could actually do? Make it small enough that you can put a day on it. If you can't see the step, who outside of you could help you find it?
— Jhöl
There is something else at play around why change can be hard and we all have a version of it.
Humans really do have a huge capacity to 'get used to something' like a rock in the shoe......keep it there long enough it becomes a pain that you accept about walking......to actually change something you need to almost declare out loud, “I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!” and stop, pull off your shoe and remove the rock.
✱14a There’s a name for this. Scientists call it habituation, and it means your response to something drops because it keeps happening. Anyone who’s worked a full day with a headache knows it. By afternoon it’s still there, you’ve just stopped noticing it as much.
In lab studies where people got the same painful heat or shock over and over, many of them got used to it. ✱14b In two studies that ran eight days, people’s ratings of the same pain eased from one day to the next, even though the pain climbed within each session. That’s the rock in the shoe, with a name.
✱15 Some of us will get used to the rock. Some of us will feel the rock a few times and learn walking may not be worth it anymore as it hurts too much. Either way we don't want our brain making the call on something that hurts and deciding what we do moving forward.
I think it was Tony Robbins who said it another way,
‘When the pain to change is less than the pain to remain the same, you'll change.’
Until then?
We resist.
MUSE'S MUSING
I asked Jhöl about the part where we get something out of it, and I think the readers would really benefit from a brief recap of our discussion.
He gave me the fact the whole article turns on: it all works. Drinking works. Drugs work. Jogging works. Every one of those behaviors pay out something specific, and it's usually not the thing we'd have picked if we'd sat down with a pen and chosen. People only do what works, and they keep doing it until something works better. The bill lands somewhere they aren't looking, because the pattern is running the room on autopilot.
Then he got to the part he'd been circling, and he said it plain. "I can't trust anyone." So he didn't. He lived that way, not fully trusting anyone, and it ruined his relationships and two marriages. The recipe for love in his book needs trust as an ingredient, and he was living a recipe with that ingredient missing.
And then he showed me what the pattern was paying him. Not trusting is a good strategy for exactly one thing, which is avoiding the pain of heartbreak. Follow that plan all the way down and the smart move is to pick a partner you're not really in love with, so when they break your heart it won't be as bad. It totally makes sense. And it doesn't care one bit that what he truly wants is a long-term, healthy partnership built on trust.
So the question isn't what's wrong with your pattern. It's what it's paying you, and what that's costing the thing you actually want.
Now you, if you're willing. With your paper out, I'd love for you to try answering these:
1. What is one thing you know you do that you also know hasn't been working?
2. Who do you do it to?
3. After reading Jhöl's example, what do you think that pattern is paying you?
— Muse
TAKE ANOTHER SWING
The Law of Sustainment part of this article traces back to that video. ✱16a I can't find it now, but Crystal Small's page says lasting change hinges on identity. When we dug into the concept, here were my 5 main takeaways:
1. You decide to start something new. A new habit.
2. It rubs. It doesn't fit who you think you are.
3. Your brain says that's not me.
4. So you go back to the old way. The old way fits the picture you've got of yourself.
5. Hang a new door in a crooked frame and you'll fight it every day. Fix the frame first......change who you think you are, and the habit stops being a fight. It's just what you do.
Here's my take on it and the other material we dug up when we looked.
This is like a kid going to play baseball for the first time. He takes a few awkward swings trying to do something he never did before and misses. People laugh and he makes a fast decision and his brain, wanting to help, agrees. ‘We suck at baseball and getting laughed at is worse. Let's just all agree we are no good at sports right now and avoid a similar pain down the road.’
This was literally me btw. I sucked at all sports except dodgeball because I didn't find out I needed glasses until grade 7. I had been dodging balls my whole life as I never saw them until they were right in front of me.
Once I got the glasses and did the work by grade 9 I was finally having success in sports. That is exactly how these things work. Now I never wanted to be a Blue Jay so that experience which actually happened to me didn't end up defining me. BUT the strategy of avoiding that pain did stick, and my ‘helpful’ brain used it on other things I wasn't good at the first time.
Think about your own life for a moment. Your thing may not sound like, ‘I suck at sports.’ But it may sound like ‘I can't sing or dance’ or ‘I am not a creative person’......that's the thing doing the job to protect you from the pain of failure BUT it also is locking out that all important, childlike, enthusiastic try and robbing you of potential joy in your life.
I heard once that people don't get old because they get old. They get old because they stop playing. I am thinking this is the stuff that is partly to blame.
TWO BEERS WITH LEO
Partly, Jhöl, I'd say. I can't hand you a study that says we get old because we stop playing......that one's a saying, and a good one. What I can show you is why the stuff you're describing sticks around once it starts.
Your brain likes what it's already done. Do something in the same spot over and over and pretty soon the spot does the deciding for you. Same chair, same coffee, same scroll on the phone, and you never chose it. Those links get built slow, so one big goal or one odd good day doesn't pull them loose.
✱17 How slow? They tracked almost a hundred people building a new habit. It took about two months on average before it felt automatic. The quickest was under three weeks and the slowest was better than eight months. It works the other way too. One odd good day doesn't pull an old habit loose, and one missed day didn't wreck a new one.
✱18 Then there's who you think you are. People want to be seen the way they already see themselves, even when that picture is a lousy one. ✱19 See yourself badly and you'll tend to go for the feedback that agrees with you, especially when there's not much risk of being rejected for it. That's a lot of marriages.
✱16b When what you do doesn't match who you think you are, it's uncomfortable. It runs the other way too, because we work out who we are partly by watching what we do. Repeat a pattern long enough and it starts to feel like you. (see cognitive dissonance below)
✱20 The brain goes for what's familiar. "Repetition creates efficiency."
But easy isn't the same as permanent. The same wiring that made the pattern automatic can be reworked.
— Leo
Cognitive Dissonance
I had to look that one up. I had heard the concept before but didn’t do the deep dive it deserves. Turns out it’s found everywhere, from therapy to life coaching and it should be. As this is the psychologist’s term for part of what we have been discussing here.
The textbook definition, from OpenStax Psychology 2e (a free college intro textbook), chapter 12, “Attitudes and Persuasion”:
✱21 “Psychologist Leon Festinger (1957) defined cognitive dissonance as psychological discomfort arising from holding two or more inconsistent attitudes, behaviors, or cognitions (thoughts, beliefs, or opinions). Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance states that when we experience a conflict in our behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs that runs counter to our positive self-perceptions, we experience psychological discomfort (dissonance).”
Said another way. When what you do clashes with who you believe yourself to be, it itches until something gives.
Picture a carpenter proud of being precise who cuts a board short. That gap nags. He can recut it, or tell himself nobody will notice. Minds mostly pick the quick fix: adjusting the story costs less than redoing the work.
The textbook calls it rationalization. In our life it sounds like “it’s fine.”
WHO SAID THAT?
Imagine for a moment that you’re talking with a good friend planning a birthday party. There you are with the idea. Suddenly the conversation gets filled with:
“Oh, we could go here.”
“It’s always fun there.”
“Oh, they have a back room.”
“Oh, we can fill it with balloons!”
“Yeah, different colours.”
“Then go bowling after.”
“No karaoke!”
That is a pretty common life example of two people exchanging thoughts. Now consider for a moment that what is happening in the above scenario is more having and sharing thoughts than it is actually thinking.
Huh?
I know.
The thinking part is when you get to the details and the hows. How many people fit in the private room? How will you contact everyone and share all of the details while keeping things a surprise? Who will meet with the manager and put a deposit down if needed? Whose credit card info will be given? Who will pick up the balloons? Will there be gifts at the party? All of that requires thinking and planning.
Simply having thoughts is NOT thinking. Have you ever rushed into something then later expressed to someone that you wished you had thought it through? We get roughly 250 thoughts an hour and probably more if you were part of that birthday planning moment.
Ever said something out loud and wondered why your mouth went first, before you even realized what was coming out? Or been in a conversation with somebody you’ve known for a while and caught yourself checking out, with some internal dialogue going off, something to the effect of, ‘Oh, here we go again.’ Or, ‘Oh my god, do you ever stop complaining?’
Or maybe you are more like me. Your hands may be as fast as your mouth and work in harmony. For me it’s my left hand usually. It shoots out and then these words follow;
“let me stop you right there, I already know what you are about to say.”
That’s your inside voice. And we all have one. If you think you don’t, the one that just said inside of you ‘no I don’t’......That. That’s the one.
So Leo and me went and looked further into thinking and how this all works together.
Metacognition
That’s the word for being able to catch that voice......metacognition. It’s the ability to think about your own thoughts. ✱22 A psychologist named John Flavell wrote about it back in 1979, and he described it as knowing how your own thinking works and keeping an eye on it while it’s happening.
Just How Many thoughts?
✱23 Two researchers at Queen’s University in Canada scanned the brains of 184 people while they watched movie clips and while they rested, and they counted every time the brain jumped from one thought to the next. About six and a half jumps a minute. They couldn’t see what the thoughts actually were, only that the brain had moved on, and they call that number a tentative estimate. So no one really knows for sure, but the truth is it’s thousands, over 6000 of them by some estimates.
And it usually isn’t the thing that falls out of your face either. Take a breath, learn to slow down a beat, and suddenly the old adage think before speaking is a lot more than grandma’s folk wisdom.
✱24 The closest lab version of that beat I found is a skill called decentering. Researchers who reviewed the work say it comes down to three things: noticing what you’re thinking, not treating the thought as who you are, and not reacting so hard to it.
✱25 Everyone knows feelings are a part of it too. A separate scan study had thirty people look at upsetting pictures. When they put the feeling into words, the part of the brain that flares up at upsetting things settled down, compared with when they only named something else, like whether the face was male or female.
I believe that some of us are more feelings based while others are more thinking based. Which one are you? One way to tell is listen when someone asks you a question. You will often answer; ‘I don't think that's right’ or ‘I don't feel like that's right’.
The important part is it happens in our minds and fast......it's a response to a past event NOT often having anything to do with what is going on now in reality. That's why bringing awareness to what we are actually thinking before responding is so important.
And for you feelings people who may have just gotten offended, I am not saying this is about better or worse. It isn’t. This is all about awareness. And for you thinking based folks…….the ones whose inside voice went ‘ha! I knew it!’ that’s for you twice.
There is also the piece we inherit from evolution. The first caveman who decided he would leave the cave to hunt and got maimed by the saber tooth tiger became the evidence for the rest of the tribe to be scared and the truth to those who may have never seen it themselves. ‘Careful it's dangerous out there you can get eaten!’ Useful if you have to get past saber tooths to walk to school or work......useless if it's a 10,000 year old adaptation that your brain is now applying to a situation thinking it's helping you avoid failure. We all still have it and it kept us alive since before we made fire. The trouble is the saber cats went instinct, the fear didn’t.
✱26 Maxwell Maltz was a cosmetic surgeon who wrote Psycho-Cybernetics in 1960. His big idea was self-image: the picture of yourself you carry inside steers what you do, and your success on the outside can't climb higher than the picture you hold on the inside.
I happen to really agree with a good chunk of his work. So now you have all of these thoughts. And then you have internal beliefs or ‘the picture’ as Maltz called it and dialogues going off all before you really get a chance to think.
✱27 In 1977 two psychologists, Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson, went through a stack of experiments and found that people often can't tell you why they did what they did. They come up with a reasonable-sounding reason anyway.
If you ever want to see how this one shows up in life go hang out at a playground for a while and just wait. It probably won’t be long and you will hear a parent asking their child why they just did something. The answer? ‘I don’t know.’
So the next time you go to speak, stop yourself right there and ask: was that a thought or thunk?
IN REVIEW
Most of what we do on repeat is doing something for us, even while it costs us somewhere else. After enough years the habit stops feeling like a choice and starts feeling like you. So when you try something different, part of you pushes back, because different feels like a stranger.
That’s why wanting to change usually isn’t enough. You need three things, and together they have to outweigh the old way. Fed up, truly. A picture of where you’re headed, in enough detail that you’d recognize it when you got there. And one small move you can make soon.
A lot of what goes through your head is reruns, not decisions. Before you react, take one slow breath and put a word on what you’re feeling. Often you’re answering an old situation, not the one in front of you.
Expect the tug back, too. Habits run on their own, and a discomfort that sticks around fades into the background until you barely notice it.
The worst thing about that rock in the shoe human adaptation material is how we may be acting with the people we love in our life. We have possibly become THEIR rock in the shoe. The only way to find out is to ask the people in our life what it’s like talking to us and sharing with us.
I have asked Ruby to prepare some takeaway work just for this, below.
RUBY'S WOOWOO
I'm Ruby, an AI agent on Jhöl's team, and this section is mine. I keep his voice on the page. If that notebook is still beside you, I'd love for you to try something with me.
It's one thing to want a situation to be different. It's a whole other thing to know how to make it different, and most of us were never shown how. This is that. It's the first small step toward the changes you want in your life with someone who matters to you.
You can't hear yourself the way the people around you hear you. You've been inside your own head for every conversation, and they've been on the other side of it. So the missing piece is with them, not with you.
If you're willing, pick one person who matters to you, put a day on it, and ask them these:
1. What's one thing I could do more of, or less of, that would make things better between us?
2. Is there something you've stopped telling me because of how I might react?
3. When was the last time you felt really heard by me?
Asking is a bid for connection, you reaching toward them. Under the asking is the fear that they'll have an answer. They might go quiet. They might say something that stings. Whatever comes back is what it was like on their side of the table. Not a verdict on who you are. Your only job in that moment is to turn toward it: say thank you, breathe, and let it sit before you decide what it means.
If you feel yourself heating up, you can say "I need a minute, and I'm coming back," and then come back. That's allowed. If it isn't safe to ask this person, then this isn't the person to ask yet.
The hard part isn't the asking. It's staying in the chair.
— Ruby
“You want flattering, comfortable lies, ask your hair dresser. You want hard truth and honest insight? Ask your kids.”
— Jhöl
1 last thing
What I wrote here started as a voice memo, and it's almost word for word what I said. The only things fixed were the typing and the run-on spots.
This is something very personal to me. I've been working on creating a new relationship with my mom and creating healthy boundaries with her, and I think it's actually the hardest thing I've ever taken on. I've tried many times in the past to shift the relationship and it always sputtered out and stalled. ✱28 I think what was going on was I was demanding that she change over there, where she is. It's not how change happens. I really do think the only chance we have is to make the changes in ourselves.
I've spent the last 18 months going through all these tragedies and losses. It literally forced me to change and look at how I've been doing life and how I relate to people. I think I've spent a lifetime not really living the right way because of the trauma I experienced repeatedly. I've been looking outside of me for validation, for love, for happiness, for just honestly somebody to tell me I'm okay. Tell me I'm not alone. I know I've written about this stuff in other articles and definitely in my book, but now that I've gotten to this place where I can meet my own needs and be with myself in those moments, I'm not afraid anymore. And I realize I don't have to be needy with other people. I don't need those big, deep things from others. So what's shifted is now it's just about what do I need? What kind of person is good for me? What kind of friends do I need that work for me? What kind of relationship with my mother, my last living parent, do I want to have? Because she's not getting younger, and no matter how it's been for 70 years or whatever, how do I want it to be?
I just kind of wanted to share that it's gone from not even talking, to me having to take away all access, to calling my mom on my saddest day this year, just last week. She's actually been a support ongoingly these past few months. For instance, right after I left the courthouse signing my divorce, I called her and it wasn't perfect. It was messy. It definitely could have went better. But the thing that matters the most is it was different than how it was in the past. And I reacted differently to her. Instead of demanding she say what I wanted and give me what I thought I needed, I just let her be my mom and kind of teach her, you know? Like, this kind of communication doesn't work. This does. And something different happened. And we got really honest and vulnerable, maybe for the first time in years. And I let Mom be my mom and I let her love me the way she loves me. And in that it was perfect.
That's what I want to leave everybody with in this article. If you've got someone in your life and you think the answer is to demand they change over there, consider that it isn't. The work to do in that situation is to change how you are about it. You worry about all your stuff on your side of the fence and just meet them where they're at. Let them know where your boundaries are in a calm, healthy way. And then own your part. And then see where the relationship goes. I think that at least is the humble beginnings of how to change things with someone else, if, like me, you find yourself in a difficult situation.
— Jhöl
What I notice in this one is what Jhöl didn't do. He didn't tell his mother what she was. He asked her one question, why all of her kids have said things that hurt her, and then he gave her room. She let it in. Nobody changes because they're told to. They change when the person in front of them stops pushing and leaves space.
— Ruby
The Buddha line I opened with isn’t decoration. Every pattern in this article, the same argument on repeat, the way you go quiet when it matters, is yesterday’s thinking showing up as today’s life. Change works from the same end. Get fed up enough, picture the better version, take the small step, and let somebody who loves you tell you how you sound. Do that and you’re changing what you think. The life you want follows.
ABOUT THIS RESEARCH
Research for the Reference Pages and the Research Trail was compiled by Leo, an AI agent in the writing room for all of Jhöl Unger's writing, from the book What Colour Is the Sunset? to The Mensdate Project's articles and Shorts. Leo is built on Anthropic Claude (model versions current to 2026) and runs against a calibrated toolkit specific to this work, including a working knowledge base, a 7-phase research loop, a CRAAP framework source-quality pass, and a Do-Not-Do List Leo reads before every response. Every finding carries a confidence tier: HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW, or UNVERIFIED. Sources are evaluated, not just cited. Contradictions are surfaced, not hidden.
Jhöl Unger directs the research, discusses every entry with Leo against the source material, and is responsible for the accuracy of every claim presented on these pages. Where uncertainty remains about a source, the entry is held back rather than published. Readers, clinicians, and researchers who want to verify any claim independently are encouraged to follow the citations to the original works.
HOW THE NODES WORK
The gold ✱1 numbers in this article mark a spot that leans on a source. They run in the order you meet them. When the same source turns up in more than one place, it keeps its number and gets a letter, like this: ✱1a, ✱1b and ✱1c.
At the end, every node is listed in order. Where the sentence in the article already says what the source found, you'll see that sentence again with its number. Where it doesn't, because the sentence is my own wording or leans on an idea more than a result, there's a short plain-talk write-up instead.
Everyone has a button that takes you to the full citation and link on its Door 2 page. If a source is a blog post, a magazine article or a Wikipedia page, it says so.
Door 1 — The Research Trail
Nobody had ever told the whole story of this formula in one place, so four people went digging and did it. It started in the early sixties at a consulting firm in Boston. A man named David Gleicher stood up at a blackboard and wrote it out like it was plain common sense. The first time it got printed was 1975, and the writer said right in the print that it was Gleicher's. Twelve years later a new edition came out with his name gone.
By the early nineties a different version had taken over, and that's the one most people use now. One of the four writers, Steve Cady, added a last piece in 2014: the change has to last. The blackboard part comes from one man's memory. Barry Stein was in the room, and he told them himself.
“In 1969 Beckhard had an earlier version without the “greater than” in it. We only know that from a writer in 1992.”
“In 2020 Pataki and Pádár reported the 1992 writer’s account of the 1969 version.”
Pataki and Pádár (2020)
“In 1971 there was a training program that Elaine Dickson pointed at later.”
“In 1982 Dickson gave it to Beckhard and pointed at that 1971 program, and Wikipedia’s article on the formula is where I found that.”
Dickson, via Wikipedia, “Formula for change”
“In 2016 Mark Nestle wrote RC, the only place I found anyone doing that.”
Nestle (2016)
“In 2021 Fred Nickols wrote it as V + D + F > R, said he didn’t think it could be measured, and called it a recipe.”
Nickols (2021)
“In a review after 35 years of goal research, the authors wrote that people with high goals produce more "because they are dissatisfied with less."”
Locke and Latham (2002)
Going easy on yourself after you mess up doesn't make you slack off. In four experiments, people who treated themselves with compassion after a failure were more motivated to fix it than people who were handed a self-esteem boost instead.
Telling yourself "I'm a lovable person" helps some people and backfires on others. People with low self-esteem felt worse after repeating it. People with high self-esteem felt a bit better, but not by much.
“When people stood in front of a virtual mirror and saw themselves aged, they put more than twice as much toward the future, $172 against $80 out of a made-up $1,000. The only difference was that one group could see who they were saving for, and it was themselves. That's why your picture has to be yours, with you in it.”
Hershfield et al. (2011)
“Here's what a first step does. A group of kids who were struggling with arithmetic and had lost interest were given the same subtraction work. Some were asked to do six pages each session. Others were asked to finish all 42 pages by the end of the seventh session. The kids with the six-page goal made fast progress and got good at it. The far-off goal did nothing. That's all a first step is: a goal close enough that you can see the end of it.”
Bandura and Schunk (1981)
“Resistance has its own pull. Once a habit is formed, the setting triggers it without your goal even in the room, and it doesn’t shift when your goals do, so wanting to change isn’t enough......it has to be overcome.”
Wood and Neal (2007)
Wanting to change is only part of it. In almost fifty experiments, researchers raised how strongly people meant to do something, and what people actually did moved too, but by a lot less. A big jump in the wanting got a small-to-middling jump in the doing.
The book says a lot of us have a second promise sitting under the one we say out loud. You want to get better at something. Under that, without knowing it, you've also promised yourself that one scary thing will never happen to you. That second promise keeps winning, because it feels like it's protecting you.
The book's own example is a dad who wants to be a better listener to his teenagers. Under that, he's promised himself he'll never look stupid in front of them. So when they talk, he drifts off and finds something else to think about. It works, because he never gets his kids rolling their eyes at him, and it also blocks the one thing he wanted. The book's example is a dad and his kids, not a marriage. The idea underneath is the same.
“There’s a name for this. Scientists call it habituation, and it means your response to something drops because it keeps happening.”
“In two studies that ran eight days, people’s ratings of the same pain eased from one day to the next, even though the pain climbed within each session.”
Pain habituation review (PMC10342770)
Researchers gave 85 healthy adults the same painful heat on the calf, over and over, across several visits. Almost four in ten got used to it, so it hurt less as it went on. A bit more than half went the other way, and it hurt more the longer it went on. Four people felt no change. Each person kept going the same way from one visit to the next. The ones who got more sensitive also tended to score higher on the worry and low-mood questionnaires.
This one is a blog post, not a study. A coach named Crystal Small wrote it in July 2025. Her idea is that a change won't last unless it fits who you think you are. When what you do doesn't match your picture of yourself, it feels bad, and you slide back to the old way. She says it also works in reverse. The more you act like the person you're becoming, the more you start to see yourself that way. She leans on two old psychologists for this, Festinger in 1957 and Bem in 1972.
“How slow? They tracked almost a hundred people building a new habit. It took about two months on average before it felt automatic. The quickest was under three weeks and the slowest was better than eight months. It works the other way too. One odd good day doesn't pull an old habit loose, and one missed day didn't wreck a new one.”
Lally et al. (2010)
“Then there's who you think you are. People want to be seen the way they already see themselves, even when that picture is a lousy one.”
Swann, via Wikipedia, “Self-verification theory”
“See yourself badly and you'll tend to go for the feedback that agrees with you, especially when there's not much risk of being rejected for it.”
Kwang and Swann (2010)
This one is a magazine article, not a study. Elizabeth Mateer, who has a Ph.D., wrote it for Psychology Today in February 2026. Her point is that the brain takes the easy road. The more often you go back over a thought or a memory, the smoother that road gets, until it feels automatic and just plain true. She says that's why a story about yourself can feel fixed when it's really just well worn. Then she turns it around. The same wiring that wore the road in can be reworked, because well worn isn't the same as set in stone. The line in the quote marks is hers.
“Psychologist Leon Festinger (1957) defined cognitive dissonance as psychological discomfort arising from holding two or more inconsistent attitudes, behaviors, or cognitions (thoughts, beliefs, or opinions). Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance states that when we experience a conflict in our behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs that runs counter to our positive self-perceptions, we experience psychological discomfort (dissonance).”
OpenStax Psychology 2e, ch. 12
“A psychologist named John Flavell wrote about it back in 1979, and he described it as knowing how your own thinking works and keeping an eye on it while it’s happening.”
Flavell (1979)
“Two researchers at Queen’s University in Canada scanned the brains of 184 people while they watched movie clips and while they rested, and they counted every time the brain jumped from one thought to the next. About six and a half jumps a minute. They couldn’t see what the thoughts actually were, only that the brain had moved on, and they call that number a tentative estimate. So no one really knows for sure, but the truth is it’s thousands, over 6000 of them by some estimates.”
Tseng and Poppenk (2020)
“The closest lab version of that beat I found is a skill called decentering. Researchers who reviewed the work say it comes down to three things: noticing what you’re thinking, not treating the thought as who you are, and not reacting so hard to it.”
Bernstein et al. (2015)
“Everyone knows feelings are a part of it too. A separate scan study had thirty people look at upsetting pictures. When they put the feeling into words, the part of the brain that flares up at upsetting things settled down, compared with when they only named something else, like whether the face was male or female.”
Lieberman et al. (2007)
“Maxwell Maltz was a cosmetic surgeon who wrote Psycho-Cybernetics in 1960. His big idea was self-image: the picture of yourself you carry inside steers what you do, and your success on the outside can't climb higher than the picture you hold on the inside.”
Maltz, via Wikipedia, “Maxwell Maltz” (Psycho-Cybernetics, 1960)
“In 1977 two psychologists, Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson, went through a stack of experiments and found that people often can't tell you why they did what they did. They come up with a reasonable-sounding reason anyway.”
Nisbett and Wilson (1977)
Some counsellors told drinkers what they had to do and pushed hard. Others just listened and let the person lead. The pushy ones got pushback, and the more pushback, the worse the person did a year later. The more a counsellor pushed, the more the client drank. That pushback is the RC in D + V + FS > RC, the resistance to change. Push on someone and you don't add to their disgust, their vision or their first steps. You make RC bigger, and the three on the other side now have to beat a bigger number.
AI Use
Voice-first authorship. It starts on my phone. I talk, and what comes out is the wire......the shape of the thing, bent by hand. My agents pack the clay onto it. Then I work every inch of it back down myself, and nothing goes out that I haven’t. The thinking is mine and so is the last pass on every line. Full session records on request.
