--
Over the years I've read, and been given, lots of great advice about making personal changes. How to make it happen. How to make changes fast. How to make changes gradually. The whole nine yards. It's all valid advice. But it's all dependent on one thing.
Willing change.
You have to be willing to change. No one ever quit smoking (see Nick Kempinski, another Collective Genius contributor), lost weight (see Kirstie Alley), got off drugs (see Robert Downey, Jr.), changed work habits (see me), stopped procrastinating and wrote the book they'd always wanted to write (see Gretchen Stahlman, another Collective Genius contributor), or anything else, until they were willing to change. No amount of warning from the Surgeon General, the American Heart Association, or Narcotics Anonymous was going to sway Nick, Kirstie, or Robert until they were really willing to change. No amount of stress management advice or motivational essays from Natalie Goldberg were going to get me and Gretchen to change our patterns until we were really willing to change.
Willingness to change, that submission to the realization that change is necessary for our survival, often seems borne of thoughts like:
- I'm so sick of being me.
- I'm so sick of being this version of me.
- This is not how I want my life to stay.
- I'm afraid to stay this way.
Until you have that moment when you say something like this to yourself, nothing's going to happen.
Sometimes, The Universe gives you space and time to make a change (proactive change). Sometimes, The Universe gets exasperated and executes a karmic kick in the arse to force us to change (reactive change). Louise Fletcher and I stayed too long in jobs that fit like outgrown coats. To borrow her words, we stayed because we didn't have enough faith in our own abilities. The Universe had other plans for each of us that we were both too slow to get on with, so It set in motion the events that led to our being laid off; we could curl up and hide, or we could make lemonade out of our lemons. Things worked out for me, but having been through Willing Change and Reactive Change, I'll pick the former any day.
Once you're willing to change, you have to will things to change. Willing change to happen, willing it to stay on course, requires strategies and tricks that work with your unique mindset. Nick quit smoking gradually, others quit cold turkey. Some people conquer workaholic tendencies by seemingly flipping a switch and diving into a 9-to-5 schedule. Others have to cut back gradually, first cutting out an hour a day of overtime, then cutting out Saturdays, and so on. If will had faltered at any point, the mission to change would have derailed.
The old saying "Where there's a will there's a way" applies here. If you want something bad enough, nothing will be able to stop you. You might have to adjust the pace at which you work toward change in order to allow the necessary pieces to fall into their right places. But at the end of the day, if you want something enough, you'll find a way to make it happen.
Whitney Potsus
Writer/Teacher/Animal Rescue Volunteer