Sharon Weil's Blog - Posts Tagged "motivation"
ChangeAbility: What Will You Do on Behalf of Love?
Originally published by LVBX Magazine.
It’s February, the month of Valentine’s Day, the month of love. Most of the time when we think of February 14 we think of hearts, and flowers, and sexy underwear. We think of romantic love. However, love arrives in many shapes and sizes, and even more forms of its expression. One way to express our love is in the willingness to change.
Whether that change is staying on a diet or new health regime, taking steps to start a new business or job, adapting to changes in a personal relationship, volunteering to advance a cause, or supporting others through change, beneath every action for change is the reason that answers the question, “Why am I making this change?” Why are you?
We all have needs for survival. The motivation towards securing food, water, shelter, belonging, and safety will always take precedence depending upon how hungry, thirsty or in danger you are. But, beyond the primacy of the urgent reasons for survival, the biggest reason I do what I do, and the reason you do what you do, is on behalf of love. Love of another, love of self, love of nature, love of country, love of beauty, love of spirit, love of words, love of food, love of body, love of the gift of life. Even if you’re fighting, you’re fighting on behalf of what you love.
It’s interesting to shift your perspective in this way. Rather than being motivated by the avoidance of pain or the severe consequence of not taking an action, when you recognize that what truly motivates you to make change or to meet change is to protect, preserve, or advance what you value and love, it opens up your world. You can experience much less resistance to the changes that come your way; there’s much less grumbling and complaining when the “have to” is in service to what you cherish. You may not want to change your eating habits to avoid a heart condition or diabetes; the foods you’ve come to love give you comfort. But if it means living longer with and for your family, you do it because of love. I may be avoiding tenting my house for termites because of the extreme hassle, but when I think about how much I love this house and want to preserve its integrity, my motivation overrides my opposition.
Compelling Reason
For the most part, humans are conservative creatures; we don’t make a change unless we have to. Even then, we usually first exert only the smallest, most convenient effort toward change. If that’s not enough, only then do we incrementally bring in more. In every action movie you’ve ever seen the hero attempts two or three plans that fail to thwart the bad guy until finally he or she brings out “the big guns.” Think about it. We get comfortable in our habits, in our social circles, and in our beliefs. We won’t make a change unless there’s a reason, and a good reason at that.
Even if the reason is “I have to,” the more difficult the change, the more compelling the reason must be in order to overcome the inertia or fear that would like to talk us out of it. Phrases whispered to self like, “this is too hard,” or “that chocolate cake sure looks good, what could it hurt this time?” can erode your resolve unless you have a compelling reason to stay the course. The more resistance you have to a change, the stronger your compelling reason must be. The voice of your compelling reason needs to speak even louder than the luring voice of chocolate. Most likely, that compelling reason is going to need to be renewed again and again as you meet the incremental challenges that can shake your faith and your goals when the course is just too difficult. The best way to renew your reason is to remember what and who you love above all else.
Being motivated on behalf of who or what you love is not always altruistic. People can be compelled to make change motivated by the love of power, the love of money, and by the covetous love of what you have and the desire to make it theirs. Still, their compelling desire is a strong indicator of what they value and are willing to work hard to achieve.
So many people I speak with believe that their change is motivated by fear. They’re going to save money each month from their paycheck because they’re afraid they won’t have enough for their child’s education. But fear doesn’t motivate us to action. Fear actually locks down action, biologically speaking, until some sort of surge propels you through the lockdown of fear into action. What I’m saying is that the surge that propels you actually comes from love, or care, or concern. It’s what activates a mother to enormous strength to be able to lift up an entire automobile that’s crushing her son, or it’s what compels the neighbor to run into a burning home to rescue the family dog. It wasn’t fear that surged the neighbor to enter the flaming building; his surge of concern shoved the fear completely to the side.
Think of a change you either need to make or want to. Why will you make this change? Can you reframe your reason for making this change to, “because I love…?” Does it make your reason more compelling or more interesting? What happens to any sense of anxiety or fear?
Courage
The word courage comes from the Latin root cor, which means heart. That’s where courage is centered, in the heart. Physical courage and moral courage animate a fire in the heart that compels action, even in the face of fear. We see it in Olympic athletes as well as religious martyrs. Courage is not the absence of fear, but taking action in spite of it. The great South African leader, Nelson Mandela, said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. A brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers fear.”
We all need courage to be brave in the face of fear and to take action in the face of change. Sometimes the courage is simply to face what the change is: the willingness to see the change and to accept it. Whether it’s changing schools, changing jobs, changing towns, changing mates, changing destructive habits, changing the way you view something, or changing the policies of the larger culture; they all require that you overcome your fears and act anyway. The most compelling and consistent reason for facing your fears and acting anyway is on behalf of who or what you love.
There are those who show their love through the courage of their convictions: people who will make personal sacrifices and face known danger in order to stand for what they believe to be right. We admire war heroes, emergency first responders, and people whose job it is to face danger in order to protect others; social movement leaders, new thinkers, and innovators who face tremendous opposition and risk; and so many others who knowingly have risked their lives and their way of life in order to expose the truth of what they know. Today, the Native American water protectors are fighting for the land and the values they hold dear; women and men are taking to the streets on behalf of women’s rights and the freedoms they cherish. What are you willing to fight for in the name of love?
Passion
Passion is the heat that can burn through fear. When you turn up the flame on an interest, we call that passion. Whether it comes from desire, urgency, lust, or zeal, passion is the spark that creates both the impulse and the fuel for the fire of change. Without it, we’d just sit on the couch and channel surf the TV.
Some people know their life’s passion from an early age. For others, what genuinely inspires their life eludes them. People truly suffer from not knowing what to do with their lives, or what would give their lives purpose, aliveness, or compelling reason. At times, the desire to pursue a particular passion, especially if it’s off beat or controversial, may carry too severe a risk or embarrassment, and so you’ll suppress your passion. Be aware, passions don’t like to be suppressed, and so the heat that drives the passion may show itself in other ways—sometimes in destructive behavior.
In locating your passion, it’s not just by asking the pressing question of what do you want to major in college, but asking how your life can serve you and others towards utilizing your greatest gifts, the ones that you value and love. Rather than asking, “What do I want to do?” why not ask, “Who or what do I love above all else?” And then of course, ask, “What am I willing to do to express and sustain that love?”
Moving your life more in the direction of your passion doesn’t have to happen all at once. You don’t have to quit your day job right away. Rather, find what you love and do a little bit towards it each day. Maybe just ten to twenty minutes each day. Start now. Eventually you’ll find yourself filling more and more of your time with what you love to do, led by the excitement and nourishment of the feeling of being with what enlivens you.
Dedication
Giving up your weekends to watch every one of your child’s soccer games, driving long distances and enduring long lines of impossible traffic to attend your favorite music festival, delivering meals to senior citizens, or working for less pay at a non-profit organization that furthers your values shows your resolve. Some might call it sacrifice; I like to call it dedication. One of the ways we show our love is through how we give our time. If you want to see what’s truly important to you, look at how and where you spend your time. It’s as simple as that. How and where we dedicate ourselves shapes our priorities. That means that some things might have to be put to the side in order to give our full attention to what we value more. Those things set aside could be your comfort, higher income, or personal play time, but your dedication to who or what you love will give you greater satisfaction and make up for what you might be missing in the moment.
People often have a greater ease in dedicating themselves to others than they do to themselves. They will literally do things for another person that they won’t do on their own behalf. You can make excuses why you’re not attending this sore throat or checking out this lump on your breast. But, if someone you loved—your child, your friend, or your spouse or partner—had a lump, you bet you’d be seeking medical attention, immediately. Can we love ourselves that much? Can we love ourselves as much as we love others in order to motivate and sustain the changes we need to make? How can you grow love, care, and concern for yourself so that you’ll take care of yourself as tenderly as you would your loved ones?
Refreshment
When making a difficult change you’ll need to refresh yourself, rekindle your fire, and renew your hope with something that gives you pleasure, something that you love. Watching sports, playing sports, walking in nature, dancing, laughing, cutting loose with friends: we all need to refresh in order to carry on with our dedication to change. For me, I get refreshed by art; for others, it’s cute animals; for yet others, it’s sexual play. All work and no play isn’t the best way to get the job done. Our periods of concentration need to be relieved by periods of pleasure so you can rest before you renew your purpose and your compelling reason. Refreshment allows you to bask in the sensation of what you enjoy. Being led by pleasure rather than the avoidance of pain is a radical act. Being renewed by pleasure helps us harness our dedication to stay the difficult course of change.
Change is a constant. Change is a given. But, your ChangeAbility—how and why you navigate these changes—is not a given, and not always easy. When you reframe your reason for change to be on behalf of who and what you love, your reason becomes more immediate and far more compelling. When you need to strengthen your reason, strengthen your love. Your compassionate concern or your passionate fire will carry you through the doubts, obstacles, and setbacks that are par for the course of any change journey.
So on this Valentine’s Day, in addition to the sumptuous chocolates, the red roses, or the seductive play you offer, make a small change, make a bold change, but make your change in the name of Love.
-----------------------------
Sharon Weil is the author of ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change (Archer/Rare Bird Books 2016), a book designed to help readers navigate all the changes of their lives, drawing upon the collective wisdom of twenty-five change-innovators across many fields. She is the author of the novel, Donny and Ursula Save the World, “the funniest book about love, sex, and GMO seeds you’ll ever read.” (Passing 4 Normal Press 2013) She is also the host of Passing 4 Normal Podcast, conversations about change, available on iTunes. sharonweilauthor.com
It’s February, the month of Valentine’s Day, the month of love. Most of the time when we think of February 14 we think of hearts, and flowers, and sexy underwear. We think of romantic love. However, love arrives in many shapes and sizes, and even more forms of its expression. One way to express our love is in the willingness to change.
Whether that change is staying on a diet or new health regime, taking steps to start a new business or job, adapting to changes in a personal relationship, volunteering to advance a cause, or supporting others through change, beneath every action for change is the reason that answers the question, “Why am I making this change?” Why are you?
We all have needs for survival. The motivation towards securing food, water, shelter, belonging, and safety will always take precedence depending upon how hungry, thirsty or in danger you are. But, beyond the primacy of the urgent reasons for survival, the biggest reason I do what I do, and the reason you do what you do, is on behalf of love. Love of another, love of self, love of nature, love of country, love of beauty, love of spirit, love of words, love of food, love of body, love of the gift of life. Even if you’re fighting, you’re fighting on behalf of what you love.
It’s interesting to shift your perspective in this way. Rather than being motivated by the avoidance of pain or the severe consequence of not taking an action, when you recognize that what truly motivates you to make change or to meet change is to protect, preserve, or advance what you value and love, it opens up your world. You can experience much less resistance to the changes that come your way; there’s much less grumbling and complaining when the “have to” is in service to what you cherish. You may not want to change your eating habits to avoid a heart condition or diabetes; the foods you’ve come to love give you comfort. But if it means living longer with and for your family, you do it because of love. I may be avoiding tenting my house for termites because of the extreme hassle, but when I think about how much I love this house and want to preserve its integrity, my motivation overrides my opposition.
Compelling Reason
For the most part, humans are conservative creatures; we don’t make a change unless we have to. Even then, we usually first exert only the smallest, most convenient effort toward change. If that’s not enough, only then do we incrementally bring in more. In every action movie you’ve ever seen the hero attempts two or three plans that fail to thwart the bad guy until finally he or she brings out “the big guns.” Think about it. We get comfortable in our habits, in our social circles, and in our beliefs. We won’t make a change unless there’s a reason, and a good reason at that.
Even if the reason is “I have to,” the more difficult the change, the more compelling the reason must be in order to overcome the inertia or fear that would like to talk us out of it. Phrases whispered to self like, “this is too hard,” or “that chocolate cake sure looks good, what could it hurt this time?” can erode your resolve unless you have a compelling reason to stay the course. The more resistance you have to a change, the stronger your compelling reason must be. The voice of your compelling reason needs to speak even louder than the luring voice of chocolate. Most likely, that compelling reason is going to need to be renewed again and again as you meet the incremental challenges that can shake your faith and your goals when the course is just too difficult. The best way to renew your reason is to remember what and who you love above all else.
Being motivated on behalf of who or what you love is not always altruistic. People can be compelled to make change motivated by the love of power, the love of money, and by the covetous love of what you have and the desire to make it theirs. Still, their compelling desire is a strong indicator of what they value and are willing to work hard to achieve.
So many people I speak with believe that their change is motivated by fear. They’re going to save money each month from their paycheck because they’re afraid they won’t have enough for their child’s education. But fear doesn’t motivate us to action. Fear actually locks down action, biologically speaking, until some sort of surge propels you through the lockdown of fear into action. What I’m saying is that the surge that propels you actually comes from love, or care, or concern. It’s what activates a mother to enormous strength to be able to lift up an entire automobile that’s crushing her son, or it’s what compels the neighbor to run into a burning home to rescue the family dog. It wasn’t fear that surged the neighbor to enter the flaming building; his surge of concern shoved the fear completely to the side.
Think of a change you either need to make or want to. Why will you make this change? Can you reframe your reason for making this change to, “because I love…?” Does it make your reason more compelling or more interesting? What happens to any sense of anxiety or fear?
Courage
The word courage comes from the Latin root cor, which means heart. That’s where courage is centered, in the heart. Physical courage and moral courage animate a fire in the heart that compels action, even in the face of fear. We see it in Olympic athletes as well as religious martyrs. Courage is not the absence of fear, but taking action in spite of it. The great South African leader, Nelson Mandela, said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. A brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers fear.”
We all need courage to be brave in the face of fear and to take action in the face of change. Sometimes the courage is simply to face what the change is: the willingness to see the change and to accept it. Whether it’s changing schools, changing jobs, changing towns, changing mates, changing destructive habits, changing the way you view something, or changing the policies of the larger culture; they all require that you overcome your fears and act anyway. The most compelling and consistent reason for facing your fears and acting anyway is on behalf of who or what you love.
There are those who show their love through the courage of their convictions: people who will make personal sacrifices and face known danger in order to stand for what they believe to be right. We admire war heroes, emergency first responders, and people whose job it is to face danger in order to protect others; social movement leaders, new thinkers, and innovators who face tremendous opposition and risk; and so many others who knowingly have risked their lives and their way of life in order to expose the truth of what they know. Today, the Native American water protectors are fighting for the land and the values they hold dear; women and men are taking to the streets on behalf of women’s rights and the freedoms they cherish. What are you willing to fight for in the name of love?
Passion
Passion is the heat that can burn through fear. When you turn up the flame on an interest, we call that passion. Whether it comes from desire, urgency, lust, or zeal, passion is the spark that creates both the impulse and the fuel for the fire of change. Without it, we’d just sit on the couch and channel surf the TV.
Some people know their life’s passion from an early age. For others, what genuinely inspires their life eludes them. People truly suffer from not knowing what to do with their lives, or what would give their lives purpose, aliveness, or compelling reason. At times, the desire to pursue a particular passion, especially if it’s off beat or controversial, may carry too severe a risk or embarrassment, and so you’ll suppress your passion. Be aware, passions don’t like to be suppressed, and so the heat that drives the passion may show itself in other ways—sometimes in destructive behavior.
In locating your passion, it’s not just by asking the pressing question of what do you want to major in college, but asking how your life can serve you and others towards utilizing your greatest gifts, the ones that you value and love. Rather than asking, “What do I want to do?” why not ask, “Who or what do I love above all else?” And then of course, ask, “What am I willing to do to express and sustain that love?”
Moving your life more in the direction of your passion doesn’t have to happen all at once. You don’t have to quit your day job right away. Rather, find what you love and do a little bit towards it each day. Maybe just ten to twenty minutes each day. Start now. Eventually you’ll find yourself filling more and more of your time with what you love to do, led by the excitement and nourishment of the feeling of being with what enlivens you.
Dedication
Giving up your weekends to watch every one of your child’s soccer games, driving long distances and enduring long lines of impossible traffic to attend your favorite music festival, delivering meals to senior citizens, or working for less pay at a non-profit organization that furthers your values shows your resolve. Some might call it sacrifice; I like to call it dedication. One of the ways we show our love is through how we give our time. If you want to see what’s truly important to you, look at how and where you spend your time. It’s as simple as that. How and where we dedicate ourselves shapes our priorities. That means that some things might have to be put to the side in order to give our full attention to what we value more. Those things set aside could be your comfort, higher income, or personal play time, but your dedication to who or what you love will give you greater satisfaction and make up for what you might be missing in the moment.
People often have a greater ease in dedicating themselves to others than they do to themselves. They will literally do things for another person that they won’t do on their own behalf. You can make excuses why you’re not attending this sore throat or checking out this lump on your breast. But, if someone you loved—your child, your friend, or your spouse or partner—had a lump, you bet you’d be seeking medical attention, immediately. Can we love ourselves that much? Can we love ourselves as much as we love others in order to motivate and sustain the changes we need to make? How can you grow love, care, and concern for yourself so that you’ll take care of yourself as tenderly as you would your loved ones?
Refreshment
When making a difficult change you’ll need to refresh yourself, rekindle your fire, and renew your hope with something that gives you pleasure, something that you love. Watching sports, playing sports, walking in nature, dancing, laughing, cutting loose with friends: we all need to refresh in order to carry on with our dedication to change. For me, I get refreshed by art; for others, it’s cute animals; for yet others, it’s sexual play. All work and no play isn’t the best way to get the job done. Our periods of concentration need to be relieved by periods of pleasure so you can rest before you renew your purpose and your compelling reason. Refreshment allows you to bask in the sensation of what you enjoy. Being led by pleasure rather than the avoidance of pain is a radical act. Being renewed by pleasure helps us harness our dedication to stay the difficult course of change.
Change is a constant. Change is a given. But, your ChangeAbility—how and why you navigate these changes—is not a given, and not always easy. When you reframe your reason for change to be on behalf of who and what you love, your reason becomes more immediate and far more compelling. When you need to strengthen your reason, strengthen your love. Your compassionate concern or your passionate fire will carry you through the doubts, obstacles, and setbacks that are par for the course of any change journey.
So on this Valentine’s Day, in addition to the sumptuous chocolates, the red roses, or the seductive play you offer, make a small change, make a bold change, but make your change in the name of Love.
-----------------------------
Sharon Weil is the author of ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change (Archer/Rare Bird Books 2016), a book designed to help readers navigate all the changes of their lives, drawing upon the collective wisdom of twenty-five change-innovators across many fields. She is the author of the novel, Donny and Ursula Save the World, “the funniest book about love, sex, and GMO seeds you’ll ever read.” (Passing 4 Normal Press 2013) She is also the host of Passing 4 Normal Podcast, conversations about change, available on iTunes. sharonweilauthor.com
Why Am I So Afraid to Change?
Originally published in LVBX Magazine.
Why is it that I’m so afraid to change? Or, I want to make a change but find myself dragging my feet, back paddling, or completely freezing when the time comes? Whether it’s a change in my job or my relationships, even a change to improve my health, or my outward appearance, it’s as the great author and humorist, Mark Twain, said, “The only person who likes change is a wet baby.” And even they cry about it!
NAVIGATING CHANGE
Change will always bring with it the unknown, which can be exciting or frightening depending upon how I meet change in general, or to what degree I have what I call, ChangeAbility. My ChangeAbility is my ability to navigate change with effectiveness and ease—which I’m either doing well or not so well depending on the day, and the quality or severity of the change at hand. In this fast-moving world of complex, modern life, it serves me well to develop a flexible response to change, whether I’m initiating that change for the first time, like starting a new business, or having to adapt to a change that has already occurred, like finding a new job after twenty years because I was downsized. If I don’t build a flexible response to change, I can become overly stressed, confused, and overwhelmed; or I can become rigid, stubborn in my ways, and toppled over by the forces that are changing around me. I’m sure you know the feeling.
It’s important to understand that change is happening all the time. From moment to moment and from breath to breath, nothing ever remains the same. My biological processes, my organs, the nature of the cells that comprise my body, and the elements of my environments are in constant cycles of flux, by design. The nature of my human existence is fluid, mutable, and forever changing. It’s a miracle that I can recognize myself in the mirror when I wake each morning because so many tiny events within me and outside of me changed while I was sleeping. Therefore, I look upon all change as the movement of change, and as I say in my book, “What I experience of change is either the flow of the movement of change or my resistance to it.”
OVERCOMING RESISTANCE, OVERCOMING FEAR
The movement of change wants to flow like the river, but it is often impeded by resistance. Physical resistance, emotional resistance; we all recognize it. Resistance to change can profess a myriad of reasons and take many forms. These are the voices that either stop me in my tracks or slow me way down, often knocking me out of the rightful, effective timing in my response to needed change. The most familiar voices of resistance are:
Attachment: “I want things to turn out my way or no way at all.”
Procrastination: “Sure, I’ll make a change, only I’ll do it later.“
Denial: “There is no change happening, and therefore I don’t need to respond, adapt, or do anything differently.”
Anxiety: “OMG, things are changing and I can’t handle it!”
My response to my anxiety: “I don’t like feeling this anxiety so I’m not going to do anything that will cause my anxiety to rise, therefore, I’m not going to make that change.”
And, self-doubt that can come in at any time and undermine it all: “Really? You think YOU can do THAT?”
All of these expressions of resistance are different faces of fear, and the ultimate fear of all fears is the fear of endings. It’s a harsh thing to say, but the fear of endings is the fear of death—deaths large and small. These fears show up as the fear of the ending of an era, of my marriage, of my career path, of the way it used to be—however it use to be. I don’t want to make a change because it will mean the end, and I don’t want—fill in the blank—to end. In the most personal way, my fear that this body of mine will no longer serve me in health or in beauty, as it ages, can cause me to hit every expression of resistance on that list: attachment, denial, procrastination, self-doubt, anxiety and anxiety over my anxiety. Change often brings with it loss, and grief is a necessary response to allow the movement of change to flow.
When open, the flow of tears moves like the flow of the river. And so, we grieve the endings of places and times as we would grieve the death of a loved one; a necessary transition for something new to be born.
MAKING A MISTAKE
When it comes to the fear of making change, some fears are large, some are small, but even the small fears are still fears. And the largest of the small fears is my fear of making a mistake. Somehow the fear of experiencing embarrassment, shame, or hurt feelings does not equal a true death, but my fear of rejection or the ridicule of appearing the fool can prevent me from taking steps on my own behalf if the territory is new and perceived of as a risk. How many times have you stepped back because you were in a new situation and didn’t want to make a mistake? I know I have.
It may well be an exaggeration to say that my resistance to changing the color of my bedroom, or the make of my car, or the style of my hair is a fear of death, but with each change I make I do change how I perceive myself, or how I believe I’m perceived by others, and if I’m attached to how that goes, then I experience it as an end or a death of how I have known myself. If that self-perception is somehow judged, criticized, or ridiculed, then I could be very reluctant and resistant to take steps towards change, even simple ones. Dying my hair bright pink may be shocking and have my friends thinking I’ve gone all hipster, but it can grow out. Take that into something with a more serious impact and consequence, like if I have my breasts removed in mastectomy surgery as a treatment for cancer, then the way that others see me, or how I see myself, can become radically altered. If not welcomed, it can leave emotional scars as well as physical ones, and I can feel shame. In wanting to avoid feelings of shame, I might not elect the necessary medical treatment, and that could prove tragic.
Why is the fear of public speaking always at the top of all lists of common fears, higher on the list than the fear of being mauled by a bear? I’m afraid of making a mistake—and doing it in public!
WE ALL TRY OUR BEST
No one tries to make a bad choice in the moment. We all try our best with what we know at the time. I know I do. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I tell myself. I wouldn’t have made that choice if it had seemed otherwise, nor would you. But sometimes even the best ideas go astray, or more likely, as time goes on the fuller picture fills in, like the way the sunlight interacts with that soft green color I painted on my bedroom walls turning it to a mucky gray, or that job I took requires way more time and overtime than I expected. Anyone who has ever volunteered for a committee at their child’s school will know exactly what I mean about something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but then the job fills in to be way more work than you ever could imagine.
When I’m in a difficult patch, I find it reassuring to remind myself that things are always changing, always moving, and that this too will pass, this too will change. Whether it’s during one of my most arduous times, or my most cherished ones, it all changes over time, and always will. That awareness helps me let go of my resistance. Accepting the constant movement of change helps me appreciate the specialness of the moment, even as it is evolving into something new.
THE BENEFITS OF RESISTANCE
Not all resistance to change should be given a bad rap. My very resistance, my procrastination, attachments, even my cautions and fears helps me regulate whenever life is giving me too much, too fast. Resistance has the function and the ability to slow things down when needed, like how the landing flaps of an airplane provide resistance in order to slow down the speed of the landing aircraft, or the open parachute provides resistance to break the speed of the descending skydiver. Resistance can also be used to harness energy and create movement, like when the wind meets the fabric of the sails on a sailboat, pushing the vessel along, or when an NBA basketball player presses down into the floor in order to get the lift in his jump as he reaches for the basket. Cell walls create a protective boundary, keeping everything that belongs inside the cell, inside, and everything that belongs on the outside, out. So does my human skin. Resistance can serve me well in helping me pace out and parcel out what my nervous system and psyche can accommodate when it comes to integrating new information and events. Taking it slowly, even through procrastination of action can allow me to reorient to new circumstances in a timing that is more comfortable to me. In that case, my own resistance assists me to proceed incrementally through the change scenarios of my life. However, I don’t want to get stuck in my resistance, so much so that there is a logjam in the flow of the movement of change.
LOCATING THE NATURE OF THE CHANGE
Using my ChangeAbility, when I navigate change I’m also navigating my resistance to change. I do that by locating the nature of the change that I’m in. Sometimes my resistance to change is not a resistance to the change itself, but to other factors such as the speed of change, or to the unseen, unknown aspects of what is being asked of me. I may welcome the change, such as anticipating the birth of my child, but I may have difficulty with the speed of the movement of change, like in those last weeks of heavy, overripe pregnancy when it feels that the baby will never come but my entire physiology is ready and all I can think about is getting this baby out, or the opposite, when the baby arrives early and I don’t even have diapers in the house. The challenge I have with change could also be because so much of change cannot be seen until it arrives, and often it arrives, unannounced, with force, like if I had no warning signs when I suddenly went into labor in the middle of a department store.
I could say, “I am not a person who likes change,” but what I might really mean is that I can’t tolerate change when things go too quickly and I feel swept up with no time to reorient. Even desired change, when it’s moving too fast for my system to tolerate, could cause me to put up resistance. I might love my boyfriend with all my heart and be ecstatic when he proposes marriage, but when he tells me he’s being transferred in his job across the country and we have to move next week, then it becomes a complex change, the speed of which may just be too much for me to cozy up to. If I experience resistance, it’s because events are simply moving too fast, and I need to slow them down. On the other end of the spectrum in my tolerance for the speed of change, if I say, “I’m not good at making change,” it may just be that I lose patience, hope, and stamina when a change moves so slowly that I can’t see the results, like recovering from a long illness, going on a diet, or the difficult daily work of recovering from addiction.
I work hard not to judge my resistance to change, and I hope you can too. When you find compassion for your resistance, you can be afraid of change and still step into its stream. Look to see how slowing down the movement of change might serve you. Are there any benefits to creating a delay? If it’s not serving you, then ask yourself about the nature of the change you are in. Is it a fast change, or a slow one? Is it a seen change, or an unseen change? What are the rhythms of change that you are most comfortable with, and how can you bring your change scenario into those rhythms? What is needed to help bring more movement to this change in the direction you want it to go?
I have discovered Seven Principles for Change that are extremely helpful to understanding more about the very nature of each change scenario that I am in, and how to bring more movement into stuck situations, increasing ChangeAbility at all levels. These helpful tools illuminate how you can find more support in navigating change. You might want to find out more by reading ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change.
Please, don’t be afraid of change, for change is moving all the time. When you recognize the movement of change, and align with that movement then your resistance softens and you are already supported in guiding the changes of your life in the direction you hope they will go. Step in to change, and proceed incrementally, navigating as you go. You will find that your ChangeAbility will carry you far.
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Sharon Weil is the author of ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change (Archer/Rare Bird Books 2016), a book designed to help readers navigate all the changes of their lives, drawing upon the collective wisdom of twenty-five change-innovators across many fields. She is the author of the novel, Donny and Ursula Save the World, “the funniest book about love, sex, and GMO seeds you’ll ever read.” (Passing 4 Normal Press 2013) She is also the host of Passing 4 Normal Podcast, conversations about change. sharonweilauthor.com
Why is it that I’m so afraid to change? Or, I want to make a change but find myself dragging my feet, back paddling, or completely freezing when the time comes? Whether it’s a change in my job or my relationships, even a change to improve my health, or my outward appearance, it’s as the great author and humorist, Mark Twain, said, “The only person who likes change is a wet baby.” And even they cry about it!
NAVIGATING CHANGE
Change will always bring with it the unknown, which can be exciting or frightening depending upon how I meet change in general, or to what degree I have what I call, ChangeAbility. My ChangeAbility is my ability to navigate change with effectiveness and ease—which I’m either doing well or not so well depending on the day, and the quality or severity of the change at hand. In this fast-moving world of complex, modern life, it serves me well to develop a flexible response to change, whether I’m initiating that change for the first time, like starting a new business, or having to adapt to a change that has already occurred, like finding a new job after twenty years because I was downsized. If I don’t build a flexible response to change, I can become overly stressed, confused, and overwhelmed; or I can become rigid, stubborn in my ways, and toppled over by the forces that are changing around me. I’m sure you know the feeling.
It’s important to understand that change is happening all the time. From moment to moment and from breath to breath, nothing ever remains the same. My biological processes, my organs, the nature of the cells that comprise my body, and the elements of my environments are in constant cycles of flux, by design. The nature of my human existence is fluid, mutable, and forever changing. It’s a miracle that I can recognize myself in the mirror when I wake each morning because so many tiny events within me and outside of me changed while I was sleeping. Therefore, I look upon all change as the movement of change, and as I say in my book, “What I experience of change is either the flow of the movement of change or my resistance to it.”
OVERCOMING RESISTANCE, OVERCOMING FEAR
The movement of change wants to flow like the river, but it is often impeded by resistance. Physical resistance, emotional resistance; we all recognize it. Resistance to change can profess a myriad of reasons and take many forms. These are the voices that either stop me in my tracks or slow me way down, often knocking me out of the rightful, effective timing in my response to needed change. The most familiar voices of resistance are:
Attachment: “I want things to turn out my way or no way at all.”
Procrastination: “Sure, I’ll make a change, only I’ll do it later.“
Denial: “There is no change happening, and therefore I don’t need to respond, adapt, or do anything differently.”
Anxiety: “OMG, things are changing and I can’t handle it!”
My response to my anxiety: “I don’t like feeling this anxiety so I’m not going to do anything that will cause my anxiety to rise, therefore, I’m not going to make that change.”
And, self-doubt that can come in at any time and undermine it all: “Really? You think YOU can do THAT?”
All of these expressions of resistance are different faces of fear, and the ultimate fear of all fears is the fear of endings. It’s a harsh thing to say, but the fear of endings is the fear of death—deaths large and small. These fears show up as the fear of the ending of an era, of my marriage, of my career path, of the way it used to be—however it use to be. I don’t want to make a change because it will mean the end, and I don’t want—fill in the blank—to end. In the most personal way, my fear that this body of mine will no longer serve me in health or in beauty, as it ages, can cause me to hit every expression of resistance on that list: attachment, denial, procrastination, self-doubt, anxiety and anxiety over my anxiety. Change often brings with it loss, and grief is a necessary response to allow the movement of change to flow.
When open, the flow of tears moves like the flow of the river. And so, we grieve the endings of places and times as we would grieve the death of a loved one; a necessary transition for something new to be born.
MAKING A MISTAKE
When it comes to the fear of making change, some fears are large, some are small, but even the small fears are still fears. And the largest of the small fears is my fear of making a mistake. Somehow the fear of experiencing embarrassment, shame, or hurt feelings does not equal a true death, but my fear of rejection or the ridicule of appearing the fool can prevent me from taking steps on my own behalf if the territory is new and perceived of as a risk. How many times have you stepped back because you were in a new situation and didn’t want to make a mistake? I know I have.
It may well be an exaggeration to say that my resistance to changing the color of my bedroom, or the make of my car, or the style of my hair is a fear of death, but with each change I make I do change how I perceive myself, or how I believe I’m perceived by others, and if I’m attached to how that goes, then I experience it as an end or a death of how I have known myself. If that self-perception is somehow judged, criticized, or ridiculed, then I could be very reluctant and resistant to take steps towards change, even simple ones. Dying my hair bright pink may be shocking and have my friends thinking I’ve gone all hipster, but it can grow out. Take that into something with a more serious impact and consequence, like if I have my breasts removed in mastectomy surgery as a treatment for cancer, then the way that others see me, or how I see myself, can become radically altered. If not welcomed, it can leave emotional scars as well as physical ones, and I can feel shame. In wanting to avoid feelings of shame, I might not elect the necessary medical treatment, and that could prove tragic.
Why is the fear of public speaking always at the top of all lists of common fears, higher on the list than the fear of being mauled by a bear? I’m afraid of making a mistake—and doing it in public!
WE ALL TRY OUR BEST
No one tries to make a bad choice in the moment. We all try our best with what we know at the time. I know I do. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I tell myself. I wouldn’t have made that choice if it had seemed otherwise, nor would you. But sometimes even the best ideas go astray, or more likely, as time goes on the fuller picture fills in, like the way the sunlight interacts with that soft green color I painted on my bedroom walls turning it to a mucky gray, or that job I took requires way more time and overtime than I expected. Anyone who has ever volunteered for a committee at their child’s school will know exactly what I mean about something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but then the job fills in to be way more work than you ever could imagine.
When I’m in a difficult patch, I find it reassuring to remind myself that things are always changing, always moving, and that this too will pass, this too will change. Whether it’s during one of my most arduous times, or my most cherished ones, it all changes over time, and always will. That awareness helps me let go of my resistance. Accepting the constant movement of change helps me appreciate the specialness of the moment, even as it is evolving into something new.
THE BENEFITS OF RESISTANCE
Not all resistance to change should be given a bad rap. My very resistance, my procrastination, attachments, even my cautions and fears helps me regulate whenever life is giving me too much, too fast. Resistance has the function and the ability to slow things down when needed, like how the landing flaps of an airplane provide resistance in order to slow down the speed of the landing aircraft, or the open parachute provides resistance to break the speed of the descending skydiver. Resistance can also be used to harness energy and create movement, like when the wind meets the fabric of the sails on a sailboat, pushing the vessel along, or when an NBA basketball player presses down into the floor in order to get the lift in his jump as he reaches for the basket. Cell walls create a protective boundary, keeping everything that belongs inside the cell, inside, and everything that belongs on the outside, out. So does my human skin. Resistance can serve me well in helping me pace out and parcel out what my nervous system and psyche can accommodate when it comes to integrating new information and events. Taking it slowly, even through procrastination of action can allow me to reorient to new circumstances in a timing that is more comfortable to me. In that case, my own resistance assists me to proceed incrementally through the change scenarios of my life. However, I don’t want to get stuck in my resistance, so much so that there is a logjam in the flow of the movement of change.
LOCATING THE NATURE OF THE CHANGE
Using my ChangeAbility, when I navigate change I’m also navigating my resistance to change. I do that by locating the nature of the change that I’m in. Sometimes my resistance to change is not a resistance to the change itself, but to other factors such as the speed of change, or to the unseen, unknown aspects of what is being asked of me. I may welcome the change, such as anticipating the birth of my child, but I may have difficulty with the speed of the movement of change, like in those last weeks of heavy, overripe pregnancy when it feels that the baby will never come but my entire physiology is ready and all I can think about is getting this baby out, or the opposite, when the baby arrives early and I don’t even have diapers in the house. The challenge I have with change could also be because so much of change cannot be seen until it arrives, and often it arrives, unannounced, with force, like if I had no warning signs when I suddenly went into labor in the middle of a department store.
I could say, “I am not a person who likes change,” but what I might really mean is that I can’t tolerate change when things go too quickly and I feel swept up with no time to reorient. Even desired change, when it’s moving too fast for my system to tolerate, could cause me to put up resistance. I might love my boyfriend with all my heart and be ecstatic when he proposes marriage, but when he tells me he’s being transferred in his job across the country and we have to move next week, then it becomes a complex change, the speed of which may just be too much for me to cozy up to. If I experience resistance, it’s because events are simply moving too fast, and I need to slow them down. On the other end of the spectrum in my tolerance for the speed of change, if I say, “I’m not good at making change,” it may just be that I lose patience, hope, and stamina when a change moves so slowly that I can’t see the results, like recovering from a long illness, going on a diet, or the difficult daily work of recovering from addiction.
I work hard not to judge my resistance to change, and I hope you can too. When you find compassion for your resistance, you can be afraid of change and still step into its stream. Look to see how slowing down the movement of change might serve you. Are there any benefits to creating a delay? If it’s not serving you, then ask yourself about the nature of the change you are in. Is it a fast change, or a slow one? Is it a seen change, or an unseen change? What are the rhythms of change that you are most comfortable with, and how can you bring your change scenario into those rhythms? What is needed to help bring more movement to this change in the direction you want it to go?
I have discovered Seven Principles for Change that are extremely helpful to understanding more about the very nature of each change scenario that I am in, and how to bring more movement into stuck situations, increasing ChangeAbility at all levels. These helpful tools illuminate how you can find more support in navigating change. You might want to find out more by reading ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change.
Please, don’t be afraid of change, for change is moving all the time. When you recognize the movement of change, and align with that movement then your resistance softens and you are already supported in guiding the changes of your life in the direction you hope they will go. Step in to change, and proceed incrementally, navigating as you go. You will find that your ChangeAbility will carry you far.
-----------
Sharon Weil is the author of ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change (Archer/Rare Bird Books 2016), a book designed to help readers navigate all the changes of their lives, drawing upon the collective wisdom of twenty-five change-innovators across many fields. She is the author of the novel, Donny and Ursula Save the World, “the funniest book about love, sex, and GMO seeds you’ll ever read.” (Passing 4 Normal Press 2013) She is also the host of Passing 4 Normal Podcast, conversations about change. sharonweilauthor.com
