You Can Keep The Change

Commitment to change depends on what you’re changing. Style? Your hair color?

The harder changes like saving money, managing time better, quitting smoking, losing weight, or being tidy can be daunting just because we’ve failed before. This is a phenomenon called learned helplessness. It’s said to be a powerful force in third world countries. In first world countries, it can be as simple as: I can’t take the trash out because ‘Imaginary-person Steve’ ALWAYS takes the trash out. Breaking a routine is never the end of the world. Never.

Committing to do something is hard, but when we take a leap of faith, it’s never impossible. Committing to not do something can be just as hard and is just as possible.

When we push ourselves to completely change a lifestyle choice that we’ve had our entire lives, it can improve our lives for a day or two. It can even stick with us for the rest of our lives. Nobody who has beaten the odds at changing their lifestyle got it right the first time, except in some rare situations like when the damage to your life has resulted in what we like to say is a wake-up call.

The one decision that really matters is the choice to live or to die. Sure, being a good person evolves from that. And ultimately we become faced with a barrage of good choices: give your kids money or make them work; take the train and be productive or ride your bike and get exercise. So when life gets overwhelming, it helps to hit pause and boil things down to something simple like ‘am I choosing life or death?’ Or ‘am I choosing love or fear.’

Committing to change can be as simple as asking one person to tell you what they know about the changes you’re interested in making, even if they are not an expert. Or just asking questions out loud to an empty room. The end result should be reaching an achievable goal through making many little decisions before each action you take. Doing the right things for the right reasons.