#25 Is Change A Luxury Or A Necessity?
~ 15 minute read time ~
A close friend of mine who has known me for over 25 years messaged me about some of the content on this blog. We had a brilliant, robust and challenging back and forth over WhatsApp.
He is genuinely interested in asking questions around change, whether it’s possible for those who seemingly have fewer choices e.g. not everyone can leave their jobs and follow their dream gig. Some people may only want to make smaller yet significant changes such as getting fitter or carving out time for a creative pursuit that’ll bring more joy into their lives.
Often I write about following your heart, uncovering your purpose, getting quiet through meditation and yoga - he asked me a simple yet powerful question.
What if I don’t want to do those things?
I was stumped for a bit I must admit, but that’s the wonderful thing about philosophy and discussing ideas. You must engage and be fully open to being challenged on your position. About everything! The Socratic method is all about being rigorous in your thinking and discussion. You should not hold any opinion so tightly that when faced with a more persuasive and accurate approach, that you cannot drop it and entertain that you may have been wrong all this time on that subject. Or if your thinking still questions the evidence presented, you can still retain the right to agree to disagree.
As with science, the aim is to test and disprove any hypothesis with every experiment. That’s how we learn, how we grow and how humanity develops in various fields of medicine, technology and other facets of human endeavour.
Sadly, the only domain that currently seems to be lagging behind in terms of reasoned thinking and debate is in the arena of politics! Any reasonable person would’ve thought this is exactly the place where those things are most needed.
Anyway, I digress.
So Robert, my dear friend - this one is for you. Thank you for asking these questions around change and whether people in different situations and stations in life are able to afford the space, time, energy, money to make the changes they want in life.
Where do I start?
Firstly, do bear in mind that everyone is different so their appetite for change or maintaining the status quo will be entirely different. Do not feel attacked for holding your position on something, nor feel judged because something else suggests a different approach may be available.
One of my favoured phrases at the moment is ‘hold the space’, it essentially means that there is value in not immediately reacting around a subject or emotion or a person. In this social media age, it’s the antidote to the unhelpful #TRIGGERED jibe. Just listen, hold the space and respond if necessary, otherwise just be confident and content enough in your own beliefs that you don’t need to attack someone else’s equally valid and confidently held beliefs.
And so… I read a lot around aspirational people, who have gone through some trials and tribulations arriving at what they’d call some kind of ‘awakening’ then happily, magically, throwing off their old life to become the AMAZING ENTREPRENEUR that they are now. Happy ever after…
The problem here is that there is a disconnect for the average ‘normal’ person who reads these accounts, and will often think “yeah that’s all well and good for you to change because you have a Trust Fund of millions” or “you had stocks in Big Tech that just somehow manifested financial abundance”.
WHERE’S THE JEOPARDY?
We could all be brave with the security of ££££££££s in the bank.
We all see these hugely positive Instagram quotes written across beautiful images;
BE ALL YOU CAN BE
YOU ARE ABUNDANT
THE LIFE YOU WANT IS JUST ONE DECISION AWAY…
Oh is it really? Well frick me, why didn’t I just do that sooner then?
For your hard-working Joe/sephine Public with 2-3 kids, full time jobs and some kind of debt (mortgage, credit cards, loans etc) all this seems rather woolly, dreamy and unattainable.
I think we’re all looking to people who have made the big, difficult changes without the safety net of lots of money, or inherited property or a silver spoon in their mouths. Humans need stories, we pass our wisdom down from generation to generation by word of mouth around camp fires, now from books, films and other forms of media content.
People will go along with a story and it’ll resonate if it allows them to connect the dots and trace a similar path for themselves. If they read a story of someone’s account of change from dire straits through to success, abundance and thriving, and it outlines the steps that were taken and challenges surmounted in a way that people can understand and relate to, then that becomes truly compelling and powerful.
It’s great for one person to change, but what about the rest of the tribe? Our success as a species comes from us being connected and collectively raising our level.
The stories of change need to be available and true to all otherwise it alienates people. Often I’ve finished reading a book about some lifestyle guru’s UNBELIEVABLE challenges in life and they’re now multi-millionaires, yet I’m left unmoved and cold because they haven’t shown enough empathy in their story of change. It may have been a good read but it won’t inspire the Average Joe/sephine to take it to heart and affect that change for themselves. They haven’t truly dug deep enough into the darkness, or offered practical advice on dealing with the scary aspect of change.
I get frustrated when the answer is given as simply, work harder. Yeah sure, I’ll work harder and I’ll become Jeff Bezos will I?
Or if I just believe in myself more, I’ll be the next Elon Musk right?
In my conversation with Robert, he made an astute point which I’ll paraphrase here:
“I’d be interested in the difference between change when you have the luxury of choice to be able to do it on your own terms and with the resources available to you to enable that; versus the times when change is forced on you and you have to make change when you don’t have the luxury to do it on your own terms?”
He qualified this further with “…whether it’s life or death, drug addiction, abusive relationship in terms of change is perhaps different in nature to wanting a change in career direction or lifestyle?”
I think this speaks of the difference between situations and the choice of mindset. If it really is a life or death situation such as an abusive relationship, then the choice is stark - leave to survive or stay and suffer more, or possibly worse?
In such a scary and potentially violent situation, you’d hope that the victim would choose survival and take the necessary steps to get out, but it’s such a difficult thing when there’s gaslighting, physical and emotional violence that can be utterly dehumanising affecting a person’s thought processes.
I won’t dwell on this scenario as I’ve no experience of it to draw on, but even in the darkest situation we should recognise that we still own our choices. Sometimes we’re forced to choose to survive, follow through with action and not worry about the consequences until we’re in a safer position to be able to review it later on.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
The key element in change, and in life, is realising that we do have the power to make change, that the first step is choosing to change should we have the desire. The drivers can be different, often suffering and pain are the biggest transformational agents in affecting change.
If we haven’t had enough of the pain, then we’ll just carry on as is, but until we hit rock bottom that’s where we can start to look up and know that it can’t be any worse and change becomes the only option. People will put up with a lot before they’ll consider changing. The sad thing is, this only robs them of time.
“If You’re Going Through Hell, Keep Going.”
Other drivers can be positively motivated, wanting to lose weight before getting married, spending less to save up for a holiday, giving up something to help you achieve a goal.
Here’s another important distinction too: the difference between motivation and drive. This may be why some changes work and some don’t. Motivation relies on external factors e.g. “I’ll go for a run if the weather’s nice”. Drive is internal e.g. “I’ll go for a run regardless of the weather”. Drive is less dependent on things being in place, drive is an inner need to keep going.
It can also depend on the size of the change. If you only want to lose a few pounds then this can be achieved with some subtle changes to diet and exercise routines. If you want to save up, then start syphoning small amounts each month into an account and then it’ll eventually add up to a useful sum. These are small, achievable changes that anyone can do.
Changing habits relies on small, incremental and consistent behaviours - there is no magic pill, or stick on abs.
The challenge comes in balancing the needs of your long term goals versus your short-term satisfaction.
Will you deny yourself the cookies, the Netflix binge, the takeaway, the bottle of wine or case of beer, the retail dopamine hit to instead replace it with the healthy choice, the reading, the exercise, the learning? Change is essentially re-wiring your brain to choose different inputs - ones that serve you and build you up, instead of costing you later.
Ok I understand that cookies are oh so good and broccoli is a hard sell to some, but by all accounts obesity and diabetes are not much fun either so make your choices accordingly. Please don’t think I’m judging people’s lifestyle choices, we all have to live with the consequences of our actions. It starts with ownership and accountability.
You may have gained weight because of emotional issues from childhood, you need to find ways to change your relationship with food. Binge watching TV may help you zone out from your stressful days, replace the need with something positive - every time you find yourself reaching for the TV remote, go for a walk instead.
See how many days you can string together without it, allow yourself an hour or two here and there so you don’t start to fetishise or crave it but set yourself the intention of not spending the whole evening in front of the TV.
Set boundaries with yourself and respect them.
If we see our choices in financial terms - each selection we make is either a credit or a debit transaction, over time we can see if our behaviours have accumulated health, wealth, happiness or whatever the hoped for outcome is. Or, if we’ve constantly drained the account by servicing our short term needs at the expense of our longer term goals, then we may well be deeply in the red and nowhere near our dreams.
Finally, this leads me to the most important aspect in change.
WANT.
Do we actually want to change?
Yes, no, maybe, kinda, not sure, yeah I like the idea but it sounds like slow, hard work?
One of my oft repeated phrases was ‘I can’t be arsed!’ - which I now realise is so self-defeating. If I start to hear myself say those words now, I force myself to become arsed to do the thing so that it’s dealt with and my future self won’t have to.
“Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change. ”
Change is always possible and available to everyone, even if it seems that’s not the case. No matter how helpless, forlorn or insurmountable the odds appear - while you have breath in your lungs, a thought in your head and hope in your heart you can achieve anything.
Remember you started off as a sperm with only a 1% chance of even finding its way to the egg. You’ve already overcome odds that were massively stacked against you, and yet you’ve reached adulthood and are reading this. You’re winning.
Anything is possible.
Love
LP x
