In Common Light

My second grade teacher lets us have PE time once a day. On one of these days, we were playing a game of tug of war. We set up our teams and got ready, with one team on one side of the rope, and another team on the other, with a center point set up in the exact middle of the rope. As our teacher said “go,” my team and I started pulling, standing from the end point of our rope. Suddenly, one kid started to move towards the middle of the rope. “Why would he do that?” I thought to myself. It seemed illogical to go towards the center of the rope, because it was further away physically from the point in which we needed the rope to be at to win. Why not position our bodies physically at the winning point? 

I have thought about this particular PE game not because it promotes a new way to win tug of war (the actual place in which the people stand doesn’t matter as much as the strength of the people). I have thought about it in terms of how we think about change. 

Physical proximity seems to be the best way to “win” tug of water just like mere behavior change seems to be the way to really change yourself. We do not consider that going towards the middle (the starting point of the rope) could help us win, just like examining our starting point, our status quo, our idea of normal, our current behaviors and thoughts, actions and beliefs could help us clear away what we don’t want to make room for what we do want.

Photo by Rob Wingate on Unsplash

This topic is similar to what I described in my post called Inner Change, Then Outer, but it acknowledges that letting go of your old self is essential for change. Additionally, you may cling to a behavior before it goes away before you are ready for something new, because you get a final taste of what it is like before you are confident that you are ready for something else.

Moving toward the middle looks like moving away from victory. But it is actually the first step towards victory because you are making room for change before it comes to you. The point isn’t whether moving toward the middle is actually the best strategy for winning a tug-of-war. The point is that, from the perspective of someone obsessed with the finish line, moving backward can look irrational even when there is a reason for doing it.

Clearing Away the Bad in Order to Make Way for the New

Just like my surprise at my classmate heading towards the middle of the rope to win, we became surprised at the need to examine our current reality or way of thinking, and fully let go of that, before changing. I have found that before changing, we have to examine why we are not yet where we want to be. We can consider this in the form of a gym routine. Why are we not yet going to the gym three times a week? Well, we are tired by the time we come home from work. We have limiting beliefs about fitness, such as the only gain is to look good. We think that if we miss a day, we have failed, and then give up on ever going again. 

The Spirituality Behind It

It is important to grieve your old self before changing.  An ego death is a term used to describe the process of deshedding your old self before a new one can emerge. The ego needs to die so that you can become who you were meant to be. The ego dies in order to allow the shadow to emerge, allowing yourself to be your fullest self, without the need to impress or serve the ego. 

As Michael Ryoshin Sapiro, Psy.D says on Psychology Today, “To become who we really are, we first need to become nobody (really let go of our beliefs and be open and curious about who we might be without conditioning)” (2026).

Example: Political Beliefs

For me, I had to examine my political beliefs, where they came from, how they developed in order to decide if I wanted to go forward in adulthood with what I was taught as a child. I decided that I did not want to continue with what I was taught and forged a new identity for myself. But, this would not have been possible if i simply stepped towards the finish line, stepped towards the end of the rope in tug of war. If I had merely voted for one political party. If I had merely donated to a cause. I had to sit with my status quo, with my current beliefs in order to decide that they were not for me, and in order to embrace my new identity fully. 

Extinction Burst

In psychology, there is a tendency to cling hard to a behavior before you do away with it called the extinction burst. Similar to the saying “it is darkest before the dawn,” this phenomena is supported by behavioral science, showing that “if we stay the course and do not reinforce the escalating behavior, the intensity will peak and then almost immediately start to drop,” (Dagit, 2025). This is because we want to get a final taste of something before we do away with it. We want to fully experience what we are losing to make sure that we really want to lose it. So, we immerse ourselves in the experience. 

For some people this can look like gambling super hard before going away with it. Or fulling give in to eating excess sugar before deciding that we want to eat healthier. 

Hitting Rock Bottom Can Help Spur Change

Hitting rock bottom, or experiencing a negative experience can motivate us to change. Sometimes, we are not successful in changing ourselves because we are ambivalent (Glasner, 2016). Having a negative experience or situation that is too hard to bear often acts as a spur for us to change. Instead of wanting to be healthy on the surface, on paper, we end up wanting to be healthy because, this time, we have an emotion, a deep underlying desire to be healthy. This can connect to other desires in life such as the desire to change how we show up for ourselves, how we are in relationships and more. 

Takeaway

Would you be surprised at the tug-of-war tactic I described? In the same way, do you view change or improvement in the same way that we are conditioned to view it: a simple behavior change? Maybe we miss the fact that it may require losing your old self in order to make room for the new self – and that this is a separate, distinct process that we should first practice / partake in.

Maybe you are currently letting go of your old self (giving in) without knowing it.

If you are unhappy with yourself, or your current reality, then maybe what change requires in looking inward to see exactly where you are, and then grieve it or totally give in to it so that you can make room for the new you.

Notes

Dagit, A. (2025, September 30). Understanding the extinction burst: Why things sometimes get worse before they get better. MAC Midwest. https://www.mnautism.org/extinction-burst/

Glasner, S. (2016, April 18). Old habits die hard. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/navigating-addiction-recovery/201604/old-habits-die-hard

Sapiro, M. R. (2026, January 8). Becoming nobody. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/truth-medicine/202601/becoming-nobody

Cover Photo by Margo Evardson on Unsplash