The Two Types of Change (And Why We Only Recognise One of Them)

(4 minute read)

Broadly speaking, there are two types of change: the changes we choose, and the changes that choose us.

The second type is often easier to understand. When someone dies, when a relationship ends, when illness arrives, when redundancy lands without warning - we expect these moments to feel difficult, because they weren't our idea. They interrupted the life we thought we were living. Nobody invited them. Nobody prepared for them. And so it makes sense that we'd find them hard to navigate.

But what tends to surprise most people is the other kind. Because choosing your own change doesn’t automatically make it feel any easier. Leaving a career. Starting a business. Moving somewhere new. Ending a relationship that no longer fits. Beginning one that does. Changing direction. Changing habits. Choosing a different path - even when the current one is perfectly serviceable, just no longer quite right. The decision is ours, but uncertainty still comes along for the ride.

And then there’s the uniquely unsettling feeling about choosing change when life appears to be perfectly fine. No dramatic crisis. No obvious catastrophe. Just a quiet, growing sense that something no longer fits. Sometimes it begins as little more than a whisper. A restlessness that's hard to name. A feeling that life isn't necessarily bad - but perhaps it isn't entirely yours anymore.

One of the things I find most interesting about chosen change is how often people feel they shouldn't be finding it difficult. There is a particular kind of guilt that attaches itself to this. I chose this. I wanted this. Why does it still feel so hard? And underneath that, sometimes, What if I've made a mistake?

But the discomfort of chosen change isn't a sign that something has gone wrong. It's a sign that something real is happening. Growth, by its nature, involves moving away from the familiar - and our brains are not especially enthusiastic about that, regardless of whether the decision to move was ours or not. I think the difference is that with unchosen change, we give ourselves permission to struggle or allow ourselves to find it difficult. With chosen change, we often don't.

Both types ask something of us. The unchosen ones ask us to adapt to a world we didn't sign up for. The chosen ones ask something perhaps more difficult - to trust ourselves enough to step away from what we know, without any guarantee of what comes next.

And here is where it gets interesting. Because whichever type of change we're talking about, there is a pattern in how we name it. We are incredibly quick to recognise change when life gets worse. A breakup is change. Redundancy is change. Illness is change. These moments immediately register because they interrupt the story we thought we were living. They create a clear line between before and after.

But what about when life gets better?

Think about the changes we celebrate. Learning to trust yourself. Recovering from burnout. Building genuine confidence. Finding work that feels meaningful. Meeting someone who shifts the entire direction of your life. Creating habits that actually stick. Finding friends who feel like home. Do we describe any of those as change?

Usually not. We tend to relabel them. We call them growth. Healing. Progress. Success. Good timing. Things finally falling into place. Sometimes we even call them luck. And I am not saying that they aren’t those things too but every one of them was also a change.

Every meaningful relationship in your life began as change. Every skill you've developed required change, repeated, uncomfortable practice until something unfamiliar became second nature. Every habit you've built required change. Every version of yourself you've outgrown required change - and that version had to loosen its grip before a new one could take its place.

The qualities we often value most in ourselves, confidence, resilience, self-belief, wisdom, none of them appeared fully formed. They arrived gradually, almost unnoticed, through the accumulation of experiences that shaped us. Not because life stood still. But because it didn't.

Somewhere along the way, the word change seems to have acquired a reputation it only partially deserves. It has become shorthand for disruption, for loss, for things going wrong. When life gets harder, we call it change. When life gets better, we call it something else entirely.

I wonder what that costs us. Because if change is only ever associated with difficulty, it makes sense that we'd resist it. It makes sense that the word alone triggers a small internal alarm. It makes sense that we'd cling to the familiar and approach anything that disrupts it with suspicion.

But that framing leaves out half the picture. When I look back over my own life, almost everything I value today arrived through change. The people I've met, the work I now do, the places I've lived, the parts of myself I've discovered - none of them existed before something changed. And none of them came wrapped in certainty.

I know I am not on my own with this realisation, which means the very thing many of us spend years trying to avoid has also been responsible for most of the things we'd least want to give up.

Maybe change doesn't deserve the reputation it's quietly accumulated. Maybe it's simply that we only remember to call it change when it hurts - and forget to give it credit for everything else.

Whether change has arrived uninvited or you're standing at the edge of something you're considering choosing, coaching can be a useful space to think it through. I'd be happy to explore where you are with you. Complete the form in my contact page or check out my instagram page @comeaboutcoaching.