Making Life Changes
Making Life-Changes.
Wow, making changes is so challenging! Of course it is, it always is. Working on habits and integrating new patterns is a difficult undertaking - it is a beautiful and frustrating journey. And it is humbling to actively work on something with deep care, consideration, and intention.
I often think of habits in our lives as streams or deep rivers, the longer we’ve been doing something the deeper the water. Making a life change is trying to change the course of your river. If it is a small mountain spring trickling down a forested slope, all you have to do is plant a tree in its way, or move a stone or some earth, and that trickle will gladly change courses.
If you try to change the course of a roaring river, let's say the great Susquehanna River, it will be an entirely different undertaking. If you are doing this alone, and with simple hand tools, it will involve grueling years of chopping and planting trees; entire banks must be torn out and re-built. If you’ve been casually smoking for a year, the challenge will be much easier to overcome than if you’ve been smoking a pack-a-day for 30 years. If you are a life-long habitual liar or a bully, or if you have had chronic anxiety since you were in high school, you are trying to change the course of a mighty river. It will be very hard. And it is not impossible. It takes persistent care, presence, and dedication.
When making a life-change, it helps if you have a loving support system and a structure for accountability. Sometimes that accountability is in the form of a friend, sometimes a journal or a chart will do. You also have to really want to make that change. There has to be a deep yearning, a hunger for it. Feigned interest will not do.
Although it may seem too difficult or too disheartening when you slip up (and you will slip up), you must persist. If the method you are employing doesn’t work, alter the method, call in support, ask for help. Change is so necessary. It brings personal growth and the opportunity to learn new skills; it carries the gift of creative exploration and progress. A bud that refuses to change will never blossom, a blossom that refuses to change will never fruit. So, it is fair to say that change is a vital component of life.
Failure is as well. A fire will totally disrupt an ecosystem - from one perspective, a total disaster. From another, the fire breaks down nutrients and minerals and restores it to the soil, leaving a more fertile landscape in its wake. When we don’t succeed immediately, we learn about ourselves and our process, we uncover edges and traumas and deeper wounds that maybe need healing first. The struggle allows us to actively work the soil of our inner landscape; to care for our needs and our process. It teaches us to have patience and persistence and to cultivate self-love and self-compassion.
If making a life-change feels scary, that is because it is indeed scary to walk down an unknown ally-way of the soul. I honor you for even considering it. And it is easy to allow fear of failure to stop you from ever embarking on the journey. But stagnation doesn’t lead anywhere, whilst failure does. So, I am here for you, I am here for me, let’s work on ourselves together. Let’s support each other, lift each other up, and hold each other accountable.
