Stop Trying to Change: A New Year's Paradox
On making resolutions and Arnold Beisser’s Paradoxical Theory of Change
As another year turns and many of us find ourselves contemplating resolutions for the months ahead, there is perhaps no better moment to reflect on insights of Arnold Beisser, an American psychiatrist whose understanding of human transformation emerged from the most unlikely of crucibles. His paradoxical theory of change, published in 1970, and one of the most frequently cited articles in gestalt therapy, offers a radical counterpoint to the willpower-driven approach that typically characterises our new year ambitions.
A graduate of Stanford Medical School and a tennis champion before his twenty-fifth birthday, Beisser was due to report for duty in the army when he became sick with polio in 1950. He quickly could not stand, walk, sit, eat, drink, or even breathe by himself becoming permanently paralysed from the neck down and dependent on an iron lung. Despite these challenges Beisser went on to become a pioneer in sports psychology, a Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA, a leader in the community mental health movement, a Gestalt trainer, and a best-selling author.
It was from this personal experience that Beisser articulated what he called the paradoxical theory of change. The central proposition is elegantly simple: change occurs when one becomes what one is, not when one tries to become what one is not. For a man who had been forced to relinquish every aspect of his former identity—his athleticism, his independence, his very breath—this was not abstract theorising. It was hard-won wisdom, forged in personal experience of radical acceptance.
At some point, Beisser must have confronted the difficult truth that fighting against reality was exhausting him without changing anything. It was only through accepting what he had become—fully inhabiting his new reality rather than raging against it—that he could discover what remained possible.
This insight has profound implications for how we approach change in our own lives. As we might think about our new year’s resolutions—to lose weight, to exercise more, to be kinder, to worry less—we typically frame these as battles against our present selves. We will force ourselves to be different. We will overcome our weaknesses through sheer determination. Yet Beisser's theory suggests that this very framing creates the resistance that keeps us stuck. The more we deny or disown aspects of our experience in order to force a change, the more internal conflict we generate.
The alternative is not passivity or resignation. Rather, it is what in gestalt therapy is called heightening awareness of what is. By fully acknowledging and accepting our present experience—our cravings, our fears, our patterns of behaviour—we paradoxically create the ground from which genuine transformation can emerge. The smoker who fully inhabits and investigates her desire to smoke, rather than fighting against it, may discover something about that desire that shifts her relationship to it. The anxious person who brings curious attention to his anxiety, rather than trying to suppress it, may find it naturally loosens its grip.
It should be noted that some contemporary writers have questioned the universal applicability of this theory, particularly in work with trauma where the nervous system may be so dysregulated that the capacity for self-regulation is compromised. In such cases, preparatory work may be needed to establish the ground from which the paradoxical theory can later emerge. Yet even this affirms the insight that we cannot bypass where we actually are in order to arrive somewhere else.
As we stand at the threshold of another year, contemplating the people we wish to become, Beisser's theory offers a different way of thinking. Perhaps the most profound change available to us comes not through fighting against ourselves but through the courage to fully become who we already are. In Beisser's own words, the contrast between winner and loser, success and failure, is in our minds much more than in our circumstances. Nothing can keep us from love, meaningful work, or growth—except, perhaps, our refusal to accept where we are starting from. Thus change, paradoxically, begins with acceptance.
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