Let us journey together in hope
March 7, 2025
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March 7, 2025
By Daniel Francis
Take a moment to imagine these situations. You have to collect food from a nearby restaurant. They don’t offer delivery, but the restaurant is less than a mile away, so you decide to walk, which takes you about 20 minutes.
What if the restaurant was two miles away? You would not want to walk two miles, so you decide to drive. Driving takes you about five minutes to get there. In the second scenario, you arrive at your destination quicker than in the first.
Here is another scenario for you. You wake up one morning with sharp back pain. You are not sure if you slept in a bad position or if it is something more serious, but the pain does not negatively impact your day too badly. You are still able to move around albeit with a bit of pain when you have to hinge at your hips. The pain eventually subsides over two to three weeks.
What if you woke up with so much pain that every moment triggered excruciating pain in your back? You would probably go straight to the doctor and get the necessary care. Your back is fixed within a week and you are pain-free.
What about this, you hate your job. Your boss drives you up a wall during busy periods and the commute to work takes so long. It is a real chore to get up in the morning to go to work each day but you tell yourself, “It could be worse.” You are uncomfortable with the situation but it’s not too bad.
What if your boss turned into a complete tyrant? Each day he comes down on you, he micromanages you and he is always threatening to dock your pay because your “performance” is slipping. Under these conditions, you would start sending out resumes and looking for another job immediately.
Last scenario: You love your boyfriend. He provides for you, the relationship is pretty stable and you can count on each other. You are comfortable but somehow you are not happy. He is a great guy and the relationship is good but you simply are not happy. You stay in the relationship because you are comfortable enough even though you are not happy.
What if your boyfriend sensed your unhappiness with the relationship and became overbearing? He constantly wants your attention now. He shows up at your office unannounced and you even catch him attempting to go through your phone. When confronted, he believes you are cheating on him. You are likely to end the relationship, aren’t you?
All the scenarios have something in common and it’s called the ‘Region-Beta Paradox’. This is a psychological phenomenon that explains why people may recover more quickly when introduced to intense negative stimuli than with less intense ones.
The intense negative stimuli causes a greater psychological defense response than the less intense stimuli. The activation energy is met which causes you to take the proper action to bring yourself to a better circumstance as soon as possible.
The longer distance to the restaurant, the crippling back pain, the tyrannical boss, and the jealous boyfriend all meet the criteria to propel you into a greater action that speeds up your progression from a bad to a better circumstance.
Essentially, we sometimes need to cross a specific threshold of ‘badness’ to want to take action to improve an aspect of our lives.
Psychologist Daniel Gilbert coined the term ‘Region-Beta Paradox’ to explain why we are sometimes better off when we are worse off.
If you are experiencing unhappiness with some aspect of your life, you must start by taking a very honest appraisal of your situation. From there, decide if you want to stay and try to improve it or leave to protect yourself.
Don’t allow yourself to get stuck in this paradox where you only react when things are bad enough. I believe like everything else, God is showing us what path we should take and what we should and should not stand for.
Ultimately it is for us to process all this and make the decision to change the different aspects of our lives. So worse can be better in some instances but with proper awareness and boundaries you can create change all on your own.
Daniel Francis is a millennial helping other millennials. He is a two-time author of the books The Millennial Mind and The Millennial Experience, and an entrepreneur. Over the past four years, he has served as a Personal Development Coach whose work targets Millennials and helps them tap into their full potential. He is also a self-publishing coach and has guided hundreds on self-publishing their book successfully.
LinkedIn: Daniel Francis
IG: o.m.publishing
Website: www.ompublishing.org
