Change Starts Where You Are Now

Like many of you, I'm on the brink of major changes. I'm likely to be relocating around the end of the year, but where I'm going I don't know yet. It's even possible that the options I see before me aren't the only ones I'll be guided to explore and consider.

When I want to make a major change in myself or my life, my tendency initially is to wait for someone else to get it started or to point me in a direction or provide an answer. But the truth is that any time I've successfully made a major change in myself it happened because I made a decision to change. And it didn't begin to happen until I made that decision.

The steps to real, lasting change work in a specific way and in a specific order for me every time. It may be that this sequence is how it works for you as well.

First, after all the waiting, wishing, hoping, and excuses that may arise, I get frustrated with lack of progress. I am finished with "getting ready." At that point I Decide that I will find a way to make the change I am recognizing it is time to make. Don't underestimate the power of a genuine decision. Once you've really made that decision the universe begins to act on it immediately to move you toward it.

Next I Choose the method I'll use to support me in making the change. It can take some time and research to find the right method for me. Once I chose a successful method because I had seen a friend succeed with it who had struggled for years with a particular issue I was facing. I had seen her try method after method that was only successful for her temporarily. This one produced lasting results. I was convinced enough to try that and it worked.

After deciding to begin and choosing a method, I begin to do the recommended Practices. And practices is exactly what they are, no matter what the desired outcome may be. My journey to a desired outcome requires time, commitment, effort, and changing my daily patterns of behavior. Results come about gradually, but if I continue the practices they come steadily. Sometimes I do the practices imperfectly. Discouragement, set-backs, or cheating on the practice times may occur. These obstacles can slow down progress, but I found that if I returned to the practices, progress began again. The only thing that really de-rails practice for any of us is not doing it.

Support was essential for me to keep up my practice and to return to it when I had been discouraged or experienced some other kind of set-back. Others could encourage me, help me refocus my attention on the desired outcome, and give me suggestions to help me get myself back on track. Although no one else could do the actual work for me, feeling that I wasn't alone on the journey made the difference between giving up and continuing on. I have benefitted from coaches, therapists, practitioners, great friends and colleagues, inspirational reading and personal growth workshops. These help me re-ignite my passion and inspiration and remember the vision that started me on the journey. I see myself more clearly with their help and develop greater skills to meet the challenges at hand.

There are two things I have been teaching about a lot this past year that go hand in hand together as the last steps in the transformation process for me: Persistence and Repetition.

These are never issues for tiny children. They know what they want and are able to ask for it. They easily persist past the first "No" they hear. They keep their attention repeatedly on what they want to learn, do, or have. These are inborn talents that most of us are conditioned out of early. But they are there inside us waiting to be used.

Repetition is magic because it changes the physical geography of the brain. What is repeated becomes easier and we become more skilled at it, whether it's a behavior or a way of thinking about things.

Persistence is a particular flavor of repetition. It is a consistent, regular action taken repeatedly over a period of time until the desired result is produced.

Usually to make a major change requires mental effort to overcome all the thinking that has built up over the course of our lifetime that tells us something is improbable, unlikely, irresponsible, impossible, naive...Often the mental obstacles are more difficult to put aside than the ones that show up in form.

The change that I'm currently working with is demanding that I grow in new ways again. This is very good news because I will have more to bring to everything that I do as a result. New insights, new practices, new inspiration – these are life giving. The results are worth the effort and energy required to bring myself into consistent alignment with them and live from this new paradigm.

How about you? Is it time for a change? Try this: Decide now is the time. Choose the best method you can find that you trust and feel aligned with. Do the recommended Practices faithfully. Get Support. Repeat the Practices and Receive Support Persistently and Repeatedly until the change is your new way of living.

The point of power is always NOW. What are you waiting for?

Persistence is Magic

My grandson is almost 11 months old. When he was 9 months old he could tell what he wanted to grab was still there, even when my son's large hand was covering it. It's amazing–our human ability to identify what we want, reach for it, and persist in the face of obstacles, even when we have been here only a matter of months. 

It would seem these capacities are part of our nature. We may be taught that to ask for what we want is rude, to reach for what we want is selfish, to persist in trying to get it is unreasonable, yet we are coded to do these very things.

Some of our religious and cultural values have taught us that we should overcome these inclinations in order to become more spiritual or more selfless. It is essential we understand and act with awareness that our choices affect a larger circle of life than ourselves, but I think there is an essential goodness to the capacities we are endowed with. In fact, I think our spiritual development requires us to put away the intense self-doubt and self-denial that have accompanied our socialization. We need to behold ourselves in wonderment! We need to recognize our essential worthiness and the worthiness of our dreams and goals.

Most of us give up too easily as adults, but that's not how we started out as kids. Now that we have learned to value compassion and empathy it would be worthwhile to apply these to ourselves and rediscover our natural gifts, developing them from an adult's (hopefully) balanced perspective. 

It's time to banish the uglies in our self-talk and thought! Such painful, unfair criticisms. Such unnecessary self-limiting.

The gifts of knowing what we want and taking action to move toward it persistently have always been part of who we are. But they have been overlaid by years of conditioning and unlearning. This subdues our sensitivity to their urgings. We can learn to feel these and trust them again. We can allow ourselves to feel clarity and the motivation that propelled us much earlier in our lives. It is the conditioning that came in from the outside that is not native to our spirits, not the inborn abilities that we were created and born to use.

Talent is an amazing thing, but talent alone does not guarantee success. Education is an empowering privilege, but education does not assure that we will do well in life. Both of these can be undermined by that gatekeeping voice of self-doubt and criticism that keeps our efforts in check so that we give up before real results can begin to flow.

Persistence is magic. There is a familiar quote from Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew that is familiar to many of us: "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." 

But there is an extended story that precedes this quote as it is presented in the book of Luke: "Suppose one of you has a friend, and goes to him at midnight and says to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him,' and from inside he answers and says, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs." And then Luke concludes with a similar version of the quote from Matthew after the story. This changes the nature of the advice. It shifts from encouragement to ask for what we want in Matthew, to encouragement to refuse to give up until we get what we are asking for in Luke. It is a message to persist until we get results.

And persistence does produce results like nothing else. Next time you're feeling down on yourself and discouraged, and you're about to give up on something you want, remember this and renew your efforts in a new way. Don't give up. Instead, imagine what you want as already successfully achieved and feel it as done. Imagine that you have accomplished it, deserve it, and are enjoying it. Imagine that this goodness you have brought into your experience blesses many others as well. Then get up and go for it again.

For more on persistence you can download a podcast of a talk I recently gave at Global Heart Spiritual Center in Santa Rosa, CA, "Persistence Trumps Talent."  Just click on the title of this article above to go to the download site.