Be the Change You Want to Be, or Not
My mornings tend to start pretty much the same way every day. The time they start will vary, not the routine. Put on coffee to brew, feed the cats and then sit down at the computer. You’d think I was a creature of habit, wouldn’t you?
It’s actually the cats who are the creatures of habit and it’s just easier for me to accommodate than deal with their antics when I don’t follow that routine. Change, even small change, upsets their sense of balance and order. It throws them for a loop and they become unhappy. I have two cats, a tom and a queen. The tom is more inclined to adapt to change than the queen.
If I don’t get up soon enough for their sense of need, they pester relentlessly. The tom cat gets fed near my computer. If I move away from the computer for any more than a minute or two, he will leave his food and pester until I return so he can finish eating.
People aren’t much different when it comes to change. We know at an intellectual level that change is normal and necessary for growth, personal and communal. We even crave change at times. Then when it happens, our emotions kick in and fear starts to claw away at us, leaving us wanting to grab the familiar and hold on for dear life.
I find it with myself. I know at an intellectual level there are changes that I want to make, in some cases, need to make. Yet, all too often my emotional level just kicks away the wisdom of my intellect and hangs on to the familiar.
I can almost hear the battle cry.. “Hey, you think you’re in charge? Watch this! She’s going to keep on doing what she’s doing and you can’t make her.” There is a lot of truth to that statement. The mind and willpower can only effect so much change. If the emotions don’t start to embrace those changes, even a little bit, then change wont happen. Or wont be lasting.
It gets really interesting when there is a desire for change but no vision behind it. People get restless with the status quo and want change. That comes from the emotional level but if they can’t engage their intellect to put a shape to the change, it becomes a yearning that can scatter in many directions.
I had a conversation not many years back with a friend. She’s a very intelligent and insightful person most of the time but this conversation left me scratching my head for answers. All I got was a splinter or two.
We were discussing a tone that had crept into an organization we’re both part of. Her take was that people wanted change. So I asked what change would they like? Her answer was “things have to change”, “we have to do things differently”. I asked what things and different in what way?
She just kept repeating her first comments and grew frustrated that I just couldn’t see what she was saying. What I saw was a yearning without form. There was an emotional desire but that hadn’t been thought through in order to put form to the desire.
Yes, change can be a wonderful, terrifying time. It can lead to great times in life. If it actually takes form in order to be embraced.
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It’s funny how some people love change and some can’t abide by the smallest alteration.
For instance, I love to try a new restaurant, new route, explore away. Granted, sometimes the restaurant is terrible, the new route adds time rather than saves it, or my exploration ends fruitless. In the end it is still a learning experience so I enjoy it anyway.
Now others I know go into full pushback just to try a new route home because there’s an accident blocking the way. True lovers of the same old, same old.
Embracing change is a great skill to teach our children - because if there is one certainty in life, it’s change.
~T
Routine is something that is important for me. Most changes I make are done for a reason. The reason might be as simple as let's do something different today or there may be other more practical reasons.
Very insightful. Change in anything can send people running for the hills, even when that change would ultimately benefit them. An overused term I have used recently is people gonna people. Ultimately, if change is to occur, people need to embrace it and change their thinking somewhat.
Mindset is a big part of any change and yes people gonna people either toward their individual self or toward others. I've often had to remind myself that I am making incremental changes every time I do something even a bit different from how I did it before. And I usually manage to survive those.
For me, it is always easier to move towards something new, rather than move away from something I want to avoid. Even if it is something ambiguous like a tone. I usually get frustrated if I want to move away from something, without defining what tone I would like to see.
Don't get me wrong that doesn't stop me from declaring I want to change something, it just slows down the progress. :)
lot of truth to it being easier to move toward something new than away from something old. The new comes with a clean slate and you get to create it rather than renovating.
Unfortunately, I believe that sometimes people want change but they don't want to have to do anything for that change or have the change effect them.
As an example, here locally people want economic change. They want jobs to come in the community but then some company will talk about establishing a presence here and these same people start saying "Oh, we don't that type of business here."
Oh you have nailed that for sure. Make things better but DON'T you dare ask me to accept something different in my world. In this little community I'll more commonly hear someone complaining about something a new business is doing than hear people say .. 'hey we need to go support that business'.
I resemble this post, way too often at times. ;-)
Two cats, tom and queen, check.
Cats must have their way (and be fed) in order for me to have the peace to write, check.
Want and need to change, ego weighs in and demands stasis . . . yup. rolls eyes
Going to change things anyway, and ego will just have to deal, but it does sometimes feel like pushing a boulder uphill.
At times a quite bitchy boulder. ;-)
Interesting analogy for sure LOL. One thing about pushing a boulder uphill, we're stronger for it when we get to the top.
Agreed, but it does get tiresome.
Then again, it gets easier as well.
That's for sure! You can sometimes want it, but how?
usually you need to define what 'it' is and then what you'd need to get there.
I have also 2 cats and this looks familiar.
I rather expect that anyone with cats would find that familiar in one form or another.
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You are right, that we must put the form into place in order for changes to happen. But, with so many variables at play, things do not always work the way we plan, and I think that is where some of the fear-of-acting originates.
The anecdote about your cats at the beginning is great! It is amazing how small changes affect them, and you should be more cautious about behaving yourself!
LOL!
When faced with necessary change .. the one guarantee we have is that not acting is going to be a fail. Taking an action which doesn't work out will tell us what not to do and opens the door to other approaches. I get putting off taking dreaded steps as long as possible, I'm pretty good at that myself. You might want to consider the sooner you take one of those steps that might not work, the longer you have to find what works.