The Challenges of Change

Change is Normal.

If you are my age (or a little older or a little younger), part of the baby boomer generation, you’ve been through more changes than probably any other generation in history.

But often when we work to change ourselves, we run into obstacles. Some are internal, some are external. Think about it.

New Year’s resolutions?

Weight loss?

Fitness program?

Budgeting?

Quit smoking?

How many of these have we all said we would do? And then…

• Failed out right?
• Started, then gave up?
• Even forgot that we set the goal?

It almost (almost?) seems like goals are destined to fail. I know they often have done for me.

There are times when I wake up in the morning, Randy go. I’m going to get X., Y., and Z. I’m going to turn over a new leaf. This will be the day that going to eat healthy.

By the time evening comes, I can’t even remember who the person was that made those decisions.

Sound familiar? What is it that makes it so?

Pushing the Rock up the Hill

There are times we feel like Sisyphus and don’t know why.

There are several factors that get in the way of change. Let me run a couple of them byyou.

The Devil We Know

The way we are is the person we know best. Even more distinctly, we are the ones our minds made.

Our discomfort, pain, and the fact that we know better fail at trumping the do we know. The status quo is the easiest route to take. It’s the one with the fewest detours in the fewest bumps in the road. It’s the devil we know.

Until it isn’t.

Discouragement

You’ve probably seen some of those old black-and-white monster movies. Frankenstein, the mummy, or some other. Take the mummy for example. He never move too fast.

But he always got somebody.

Some poor character-space second string course- would be trying to escape, and somehow “Bam” would get caught. They be running away, looking back, and suddenly turn around and run right into the monster.

Changes like that. I could be determined to make change. I get so caught up in what I didn’t want, I fail to see the monster coming up in front of me. This is worthwhile in the trap and think well I knew I couldn’t do it anyway and we’re right back to the devil we know.

The Control Factor

For some of us, we don’t really accept that we can be told we have to change. When someone tells us that we have to change, I’m speaking for myself here course, is just as likely to order to simply do the opposite. I don’t know about you, but for me it’s simply my contrary nature.

Powerful Purposes

Sometimes we try to change things we don’t realize that time that whatever is required to change really fills a powerful purposes in her life. This is another trap. If we don’t stop and try to understand what those purposes are, what it’s doing for us, or what needs filling, our change effort is much more likely destined to fail.

Being Nowhere

As I’ve mentioned previously, there’s a guy named Bill Bridges who writes about change and transitions. First, what he says is every change begins with an ending. It’s important to be sure that the old has ended. Our minds are very good at holding on to the old, because I said previously, our minds really want to protect us in the short-term. In a sense, our minds are like a fair weather friend; it wants us to go out and have a good time tonight, and not worry about the future. The mind can be very shortsighted. isn’t rooted in the lizard brain, and often what we want – what we want in the long term – looks like a big risk to the lizard brain. And it’s the lizard brain’s job protect us from short-term risks.

The lizard brain‘s motto might be something like, “eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.” The trouble with that as our creed is that very often tomorrow we don’t die, and we are left again having failed what we planned to do. The lizard, when frightened by something new, wants desperately to get back to the devil it knows.

The challenge is to find a way to quiet the lizard down, get through the transitional nowhere land. What does it take?

It takes a more powerful override, an over arching purpose strong enough to trump the lizard.

The Answer to How is Why

And that’s next.