The Psychology of Change: Why We Keep Using Hammers on Screws

“Ahh now I understand - I've fallen in love with my habits just how I fell in love with my models”

Picture an engineer trying to remove a screw with a hammer. After several frustrated attempts, he declares, "This screw is broken."

The screw isn't broken—the approach is wrong. Yet how often do we approach personal change with the equivalent of hammering at screws? And when our attempts fail, how quickly do we conclude that we're the problem—that we're somehow broken?

The Action-Fixation Fallacy

Our culture's approach to change is almost entirely action-focused. Even the best resources—like James Clear's excellent "Atomic Habits"—primarily teach us how to modify behaviors through environmental design, habit stacking, and implementation intentions.

These approaches work, to a degree. But they often treat symptoms rather than causes.

Near the end of his book, Clear touches on a deeper truth: to stop smoking, one must "become the type of person who doesn't smoke." Yet the external pathway he describes to become that person still largely focuses on modifying actions, hoping that nature will follow.

There's a subtle but crucial inversion happening here.

The Internal Command Structure

During a recent sunset walk in Canggu after group meditation, I had an insight about how we communicate the desire for change within ourselves:

"I must change → I want to change → I must stop doing that → I will start doing more of this..."

Notice how these internal commands set us up for a fight with ourselves. They position change as a battle where our current nature is the enemy.

But what we do is a direct reflection of our current nature—our actions flow naturally from the bundles of beliefs, patterns, and blockages we hold within. Fighting against these actions without addressing their source is like trying to stop a river by building a dam of twigs.

The wiser approach: change at the root, and the actions transform automatically.

The Problem With Willpower

Most change efforts rely heavily on borrowed willpower energy and subtle forms of self-flagellation. We unconsciously hope that if we can just force the right actions for long enough, some meaningful root change will occur.

It rarely works that way.

Instead of understanding and appreciating that there's nothing wrong with us—that we're simply producing actions perfectly aligned with our current internal state—we use guilt, shame, and force.

It's like trying to change the output of a computer program by hitting the monitor rather than rewriting the code.

Change From Love, Not Pain

One of the women I was walking with asked a profound question: "Why do you want change?"

Her question highlighted how easily change efforts can become expressions of self-hatred or toxic self-optimization. But changing aspects of oneself doesn't have to come from a toxic perspective.

If someone is a destructive alcoholic, wouldn't the best expression of self-love be to transform that pattern? The key distinction lies in the root motivation:

If I change the root cause to eliminate suffering or align with myself—that is acting from love.

If I'm changing the action while ignoring the root cause—that is acting from a suppressed toxic perspective.

One can change their nature through the carrot, not the whip, though most self-help approaches teach us the opposite. That’s a shame, because we don’t use hate for people we want to help except for ourselves.

The Suffering-Is-Working Paradox

For a long time, I thought I was broken. I didn't understand that my suffering was actually a signal that everything was working exactly as it should.

Saying "I'm broken" removes accountability. It's like the engineer blaming the screw rather than recognizing he needs a screwdriver.

The fact that you're suffering is perfect. It means your system is functioning. Pain is information, not malfunction. I would be far more concerned if you experienced no suffering at all!

This is particularly true for intelligent people. The only way many smart folks know how to work with themselves is to make their luggage heavier—to add more complexity, more analysis, more understanding. They resist the "unsexy" simplicity of direct practice in favor of elaborate explanations and systems.

Discipline Reimagined

At first glance, discipline seems like another form of fighting against nature. But there's a subtler understanding available.

True discipline isn't about forcing change through willpower. It's about creating conditions that allow nature to transform itself. It's like preparing soil for a plant rather than trying to force it to grow by pulling on it.

Sitting regularly in meditation isn't forcing nature to change—it's creating space for natural observation. The structure allows for organic transformation.

This perspective shifts discipline from something that fights nature to something that supports its natural evolution.

The Parts Work Parallel

What's fascinating about approaches like Internal Family Systems or parts work is that they actually work—just not for the reasons many believe.

Parts work doesn't go all the way to the root cause, but it provides genuine benefits even without requiring a 10-day Vipassana retreat. It plants "somewhat false" theories about the nature of the body-mind system, using intellectual frameworks and visualizations that aren't necessarily "true" in the way direct observation reveals.

It's like people who eat whole foods because they believe they were blessed by Atlantis. They don't understand the micronutrients that make the food healthy, but they still receive the benefits.

Parts work can be a stepping stone toward deeper practices like Vipassana, where the practitioner gradually lets go of "protector aspects" of their personality through a kind of preliminary observation that eventually leads to true direct seeing.

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Future Achievement vs. Present Process

This entire perspective culminates in a profound shift in how we approach development itself. Instead of asking "Can I become an arhant in the future(fully liberated being)?"—a future-based, goal-oriented question—we should ask ourselves "Am I becoming an arhant right now?"

Instead of

“Can I become successful in the future?”

We should ask

“Am I becoming successful now?”


Instead of

“Can I become happy in the future?”

We should ask

“Am I becoming happier now?”

This transforms:

• Future desire into present reality

• Achievement into process

• Seeking into seeing

• Complexity into simplicity

Change doesn't happen in the past or future. It happens now. The wisest economic use of our energy is to ask, "What is the best decision I could make in this moment?" Then do that.

Or as someone once said: "What would a person who loves themselves do? Then do that."

The Unsexy Truth

I had to suffer through complexity to appreciate simplicity.

Many of us, myself included years ago, aren't ready to accept that something as unsexy as simplicity could be the answer. We keep looking for more and more complex solutions because simplicity seems too obvious, too basic.

But the direct approach—changing at the root rather than fighting symptoms—is both simpler and more effective than our elaborately constructed change strategies.

When we change our nature with compassion rather than fighting it with force, we stop wasting energy on internal conflict. Instead of trying to beat our current nature into submission, we create conditions for its natural transformation.

And in that space of allowing rather than forcing, real change happens all by itself.

2025 is the year of the snake, perhaps there’s some wisdom in that that we can fall back on and shed some old skin that no longer serve us. Remember many of your scars are not in your heart or soul, it’s on the surface and can always be removed.

The only way to break a man is to make him believe he is broken

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I'd love to hear: where in your life have you been using hammers on screws? Where might a simple shift in approach—from force to allowing—create the change you've been struggling to manifest?