Personal Change

Jack was gripped with indecision. His stomach was in knots. Uncertainty pulsed through his veins. A decision had to be made! Now! He could feel the opportunity slipping away. The opportunity of this trade was about to expire. “Do I pull the trigger or not?” came the question in his mind. As a futures trader, he was watching his computer screen trying to make a decision about a trade – to risk or to stay safe. And he had fallen into the one trap that no trader can allow to take over his state of mind – fear of failure.

Thoughts raced through his mind at breakneck speed, “Do it. Do it now! What are you – chicken? How do you expect to make a living if you don’t act?”

Another voice in his mind screamed, “What if it’s wrong? You’re going to lose your retirement. Then what are you going to tell your wife?” The battle raged back and forth in his mind. He pushed it away and tried to pretend he was calm and emotionless. Then the battle in his mind surged into his awareness again.

I was (ok I’ll admit it, still am) a quite disorganized guy. In addition, I have a reputation for outstanding achievements at different competitions in the domains of physics, sociology, languages, chemistry, and so on. Due to this quite bizarre combination I was known as the slothful genius of the school. Now, regarding being a sloth – I admit my bad ways and do my best to improve. Regarding being a genius – oh boy, I don’t like to call myself one. Oscar Wilde, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi – they are the geniuses. I might earn the title one day, but that’s far from now.

Being a “slothful genius” I was confronted with comments such as “Boy, you are wasting your opportunity!”, “Boy, you are capable of so much, why don’t you make use of what you have?” and “You can’t even imagine how it feels not to understand a math problem, use your brain, don’t be so lazy!” (by the way, the last comment is tommyrot). Except for some really good friends, most of the people who said these things said them because they were happy that I wasn’t doing my best.

It takes time to make positive changes in our lives. Often, it’s not the external circumstances which are hardest to change – but our internal state. It only takes a few seconds to hand in your resignation letter and quit your job, but it can take months of slowly building your courage (and your emergency fund) before you get to that point.

And all too often, we feel as though we’re not making any real progress at all. Perhaps we’re trying to change a habit, but keep slipping back into old ways. Maybe we’re not sure what we want to change – but we know that we’re just not getting all that we could from life. Often, change can feel like one step forwards and two steps back.

Wouldn’t it be great if you had a shortcut to change? If you could get a clear map of where you need to go – and keep up the motivation needed to get there?

If you grew up and went to school in Western North Carolina back in the ‘70’s as I did, you couldn’t seem to escape Asheville NC writer Thomas Wolfe and his haunting admonition that “You can’t go home again”. It was one that seemed to threaten an unavoidable and ominous loss, turning up everywhere from lit classes to libraries to shelves in not a few homes.

Thomas Wolfe’s ghost haunted me all the way to my new college as I left home for my freshman year. Following career and family choices led me away from those same beloved mountains about which Wolfe wrote. His whispered doom came to tea a time or three over post-college years spent in the mid-west.

As life took me away, I assumed that the loss was part of the price we pay for simply moving forward through the days and years, another angst-ridden negative talisman hung about the bowed-down neck of life. In those days, it seemed smart and hip to be depressed and cynical. This old set of habitual thought ran head-long into my on-going quest to build a positive life and it demanded a reassessment.

Have you ever been in a situation in life where you weren’t happy with where you were at – but you somehow couldn’t get up the motivation to change? I don’t mean cases where there are good reasons (such as financial ones) to hold back from change, but when there’s not really anything stopping you except yourself.

Here are a few, very very common, examples of where you might be stuck.

I’m a big fan of change, as you can probably guess, since I’m writing on a blog called “The Change Blog”. I’m very much in favour of growth: people finding their path through life, taking the next steps, learning, discovering and doing new and fulfilling things.

Sometimes, though, it’s necessary to hold back from change. Sometimes, you might be tempted to implement a big change in your life – but a nagging feeling warns you against it. Not all changes are appropriate for everyone, and even if a change is right for you, you may need to be cautious about implementing it at the right time.

Over-hasty change can exact a high price. At a minimum, you’ll probably end up wasting some valuable time – and quite possibly some money. In worse cases, you could lose friends, spoil relationships, make yourself ill, or even suffer a financial set-back which takes you years to recover from.