Part of a Whole: Why We Change Through Interacting with Others
Change is an inevitable part of life, but it rarely happens smoothly. What holds us back from changing and growing? Almost everyone wants to improve something in their life—better relationships, breaking bad habits, or switching careers. Yet, only a few truly manage to change.
Beware of Extremes
“What you constantly think about becomes your reality,” writes renowned self-development expert Tony Robbins. “If you can imagine something, you can make it happen.” We are the creators of our own destiny, able to control it by changing our emotions, relationships, and thoughts, and by overcoming obstacles simply by envisioning something different.
If anything holds us back, it’s our reluctance to accept this fact. When we take the reins and feel in control of our destiny, our quality of life improves. It’s true that we alone are responsible for what our lives become and must make choices from time to time. But taking this idea to the extreme—believing positive thinking alone can change reality—is a mistake.
All living things grow and change, and for that, they need an environment. (Remember your school biology notes?) For humans, a significant part of that environment is other people. When it comes to transformation, as with any endeavor, you are both alone on your journey and in need of others to reach your destination.
The Role of Social Status in Personal Change
The idea that our social environment partly influences our ability to turn desires into reality can be unsettling. It challenges the belief that our inner qualities alone determine our ability to move forward despite setbacks.
But it’s not entirely accurate to focus only on personality and look for the roots of our perseverance in upbringing, genetics, or past experiences. Inner resilience is strengthened by external connections: support from friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, and the broader community. Our ability to recognize personal responsibility (which is necessary for change) depends on how connected we are to others.
This is the paradox: to act independently and embrace your freedom, you need the confidence that comes from knowing you are part of a larger world.
Feeling Part of a Whole to Be Independent
Children deprived of parental love are a perfect example of this paradox. Those with strong relationships with their parents don’t cling to them. In fact, these secure connections allow children to explore the world independently, unlike those lacking stable relationships.
Strong, healthy connections are the foundation for developing into an independent, self-sufficient adult. Paradoxically, such individuals can use their relationships for personal growth. This is a need for connection, not emotional dependence.
“The ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love,” notes Erich Fromm.
No matter how we cope with the reality of our solitude, we continue to interact with others, and our growth depends on the depth of these connections. Stable human relationships help us withstand the dizzying freedom of independence. For example, consider your local yoga studio. Most offer a standard set of poses you could easily follow at home. So why do people pay to attend? The same goes for group fitness classes.
Peloton, a company valued at $4 billion, sells exercise bikes with screens that stream group workouts. You pedal in your basement, alone except for the water heater, yet you imagine yourself among other athletes. Why pay so much to sweat with virtual strangers?
Because being around others and feeling their support keeps you motivated. When you join group classes, your goal isn’t just to stretch better, train harder, or lose weight faster—you could do all that with videos or books. Instead, you seek what only a group can provide: the persistence fueled by social connections to keep going, even when the task is tough.
But our pathologically individualistic “do-it-yourself” culture often ignores the fact that our ability to move forward, despite obstacles, largely depends on our social environment. This is fundamentally wrong. In reality, perseverance is partly shaped by certain social and psychological “resources.”
Mobilizing Social Resources
Some social resources—like self-confidence or self-esteem—exist within us as psychological traits. Depending on our actions and circumstances, they can be strengthened or weakened. Other resources—like social support or a sense of belonging—exist only in our environment.
Consider a simple action: climbing a hill. Social psychologists use this real-life example to study how people overcome challenges. Your experience of climbing (including how steep the hill seems) is influenced by your sense of purpose, social support, and self-esteem.
If you understand the purpose of the climb, have group support, or high self-esteem, the climb feels easier and the hill less steep. When you set out to change, assessing the difficulty is only half the job. You look at the upcoming changes and estimate how steep the climb is and how much effort it will take to get from point A (where you are) to point B (your goal).
The second part is assessing threats: what happens if you feel unwell or face dangers along the way. Our sense of threat also depends on access to resources. In one study, a live tarantula was placed in a clear box and lowered in front of participants. Those with low self-esteem felt the tarantula was closer than it actually was.
One group, with high self-esteem, recalled times when others had helped them; another group remembered times when they didn’t receive support. This illustrates our ability to see ourselves as a reliable vessel capable of making the journey from one point to another. Research on the fear of hope supports this: the fewer resources people have, the greater their fear of hoping.
When your self-esteem is high, you believe others will catch you if you stumble, that life has meaning and motivates you to achieve goals, and that your self-belief and self-respect are strong. You feel that your “crew” can carry the heavy load of your ambitions and deliver you where you need to go.
Social-psychological research and common sense suggest that social experiences can either strengthen or undermine your persistence. When social resources are abundant, the finish line seems close and attainable; when they’re lacking, it’s just a faint shadow on the horizon.
Why do resources matter so much? The answer is simple: humans are social animals. When we’re disconnected from others, we feel out of place and focus more on basic needs and safety instead of taking risks and improving ourselves.
The stronger your connections and the more you feel valued, the more likely you are to take risks, knowing you’re responsible for yourself—because you trust your social network will catch you if you fall. Positive social experiences nourish you, reminding you that while you may be alone, you’re not lonely: there are people who will pick you up and dust you off if things go wrong (just like a child with supportive parents).
Without the energy we get from social connections, it’s hard to move forward. This is true for everyone, no matter how you were raised. That’s why personal change sometimes happens unexpectedly. You’ve planned everything, set things in order, but can’t move forward. Then, if you’re lucky, something shifts in your social environment—something you can’t control or even recognize—and suddenly you’re racing toward change.