One of the things you've probably heard somebody say along the way goes something along the lines of ”I really need to change my life!”
Maybe that ”somebody” has even been yourself. I know it has been me...
But what is this ”change” of which we speak?
Change seems to mean so many different things to different people, and it often feels like we have some inner sensation of what "it" is supposed to be and yet we can't exactly describe the change we're looking for.
I need a better job!
I need to find happiness!
I want to change my lifestyle!
I want a great relationship!
That's nice... but what do you really mean by that?
I believe a large part of the reason why people struggle so much to change their lives comes from our natural sense of impatience. We develop a sense of what (we think) we want, but then our enthusiasm wanes rather quickly when we discover that making a few cosmetic changes doesn't really result in the outcome (we think) we were looking for.
I look back at a major change I made in my life — when I transitioned from being a corporate automaton toiling away at a soulless job, to becoming self-employed and doing things that really meant something to me and that I enjoyed — and the entire process from start to finish took something on the order of six years.
With very few exceptions we don't just get to wake up one Sunday morning and decide "oh, I want to be self-employed," and by the end of the week we put in our two week notice and by the time we quit we have a successful business. Whereas it would be nice if it were true, life pretty much doesn't work like that!
Another part of the problem we face with major life changes is that we tend to be pretty good at identifying the sources of what is making us unhappy… as a result of which we're pretty good at identifying what it is we want to quit ... but we don't have a very clear picture of which alternative is going to replace the drudgery with joy.
And that can be the part that takes the most time, because our impulses aren't always right.
In the field of psychology we often distinguish between whether somebody is running away from something or running towards something.
And it's alarming how many times people discover that they're actually running away from something but they have no idea what they should run towards.
The reason it took me so long to actually change my life was that I had the wisdom to stop and figure out what it was I wanted to run towards, before I decided to quit what was behind me... but in some small way still sustaining me.
We tend to take our patterns with us, unless we take the time to become familiar with those patterns and then consciously make a change to break away from them.
Consequently, when I moved from Texas to the state of Washington in 2006 it was a very deliberate decision that I arrived at only after making absolutely sure that the move wasn't about ”running away from” anything.
I went through a similar process when I quit Korporate Amerika.
Of course, as I said, most of us are impatient… and we tend to be far too impatient to effectuate real change in our lives if we know ahead of time that it's going to take several years to do so. Instead, we want the magic pill and the instant gratification!
I suppose that can work... but I just haven't seen it happen. The thing is, we tend to fall back into our old routines, and then we have to face the fact that it really wasn't the "person," or the "job" or the "location" that was the problem... it was our own mindset!
Thanks for reading, and have a great week ahead!
How about YOU? Have you made any major life changes? Was it quick and easy... or did it take time? Do you find it easy or difficult to break out of ingrained life patterns? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20220116 22:15 PST
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