Life is change. The only constant in life is change. These are true statements, yet in my experience of life the most constant thing I find is a universal dislike of change. More often than not this dislike is closer to outright terror. Other than a brief period of time between the late teens and the mid twenties, people generally seek out stability, predictability, and “comfortable” familiarity. Even “fringe” people who live way outside the norms of society still seek their own personal form of predictability and “comfortable” familiarity. Why?
We are problem solving geniuses. In each moment we are balancing dozens of factors – our needs, our wants, other peoples needs and wants, the physical options available to us, possible future outcomes from our choices, the effort involved, the perceived value gained for that effort, and so on. Our life is the result of a compromise between all the factors presented us. The choices we make are molded by our beliefs, values, fears, expectations, attitude, experience, established habits, and functional brain capacity all filtering and acting upon the dozens of factors just mentioned. The complexity is amazing. It is a wonder we ever get out of bed in the morning.
As we go through our days using our genius we hold on to choices and patterns of behavior that seem to get our needs met in the moment. Over time we identify with these choices as who we are…they become us…they define us. When life tosses a need for change at us we resist it, because to change would be to lose some part of who we are – who we have become. All the carefully learned balances between all the factors that took us so long to find a compromise with could come crashing down. We wouldn’t know what to do. More accurately and truthfully we wouldn’t know what to expect as an outcome if we did things differently. It has taken all our life to figure out how to survive as well as we do and we are not about to toss that away for who knows what. We are obsessed with controlling the outcomes in our life. We want to know what will happen so we can feel assured we will be ok.
This is where things get a little crazy. Even if we are not ok and know we are not ok we would rather stay being not ok then step forward into the unknown. Our brain says “Even though I am bad shape now, any change could make things even worse.” Even simple and obvious changes for the better are viewed with suspicion because there is no telling how many of the different factors that we have carefully balanced could be affected. This is not imagined, a good example is with alcoholics. On the surface getting sober is an obvious positive choice. Yet 90% of the time when a married alcoholic gets sober they lose their marriage…even when the reason for getting sober was to save the marriage. Getting sober is a huge change and it upsets the old delicate balance in every area of the person’s life. We understand this intuitively. We can feel that change opportunities carry unforeseen consequences.
But life is change and change is constant. What are we to do?
How to learn, grow, and change is a skill. Most people are terrified of change because they have not developed the skills of change. Learning how to change gracefully requires skills very different from those we usually learn to survive. It requires skills like trust in the unknown, the beginners mind, letting go of outcome, feeling your direction, creativity, active receiving, humility, and allowing in support, to name a few. These are not skills we are taught very often in our culture, but they can be learned. Usually we avoid them until we hit a crisis point in our lives where we have nothing to lose anymore. I would suggest that there is value in learning the skills of change by choice rather than having to wait until you are forced. That way you may be able to create more pleasure than crisis in your life.
The first skill I want to write about today is called The First Step. Life is a journey. Every journey begins with The First Step. Every change is a process that involves many steps. The first step is the hardest. Why? Because the first step requires us to make the decision and build the courage and commitment to begin the journey. Our mind automatically tries to anticipate the journey and its endpoint. It can’t. The mind can not anticipate the unknown. This is one of the places trust is needed. Control is based on knowing and change requires that you don’t know, so control is ‘out the window’ – not a possibility. Our control obsession has to be replaced with a new skill called responsiveness. We have to become aware of our surroundings and feel our moment to moment relationship to our surroundings. This concept is captured in the famous phrase “Be Here Now”. Making the first step involves a lot. It is huge, and once you make it, your next step becomes your new first step. Why do I say this instead of calling this the second step? Because once you have made that first step, you are already a different person. You have to feel all over again where you want to go and why. As you walk your journey your goals will change. Your desires will change. You will change.
Each successive first step will get a little easier as you get more familiar with the skills of change. Seeing change as a series of small first steps also helps release the fears the mind dreams up about everything possibly becoming worse. If you make a little step and don’t like how things are turning out you can change direction. The mind always thinks in terms of outcomes. It looks at the goal and tries to imagine how things will be if you travel a straight line from where you are today to that goal. It does not consider the possibility of the choice to change direction moment by moment. Yet that is exactly how life happens. Life does not travel in straight lines. Life winds and twists like a river. As you learn to respond to life and to yourself in the moment you learn how to keep your balance. This way the process of change is not scary. It is mostly our thoughts about change that scare us, not the actual process. We obsess on all the “what ifs” rather than the “what is”.
If our desire for our original goal is strong and persists we will eventually wind and twist our way to that goal point. The crazy thing is, this winding and twisting is the fastest way to that goal. Straight-line pursuit of a goal actually takes longer because of the amount of resistance to change you have to fight. Making change in a light and loving manner allows for a much easier journey and also a faster journey. Toughing it out is not the point and actually slows you down. There is a skill here called flow – you are always moving forward, but with joy and positive anticipation…even over the rocky rapids. Light and loving manner does not mean a lack of focus, attention, and action – quite the opposite. It means feeling and responding to your relationship to life in each moment and finding your balance and ease with life in each moment. Toughing it out is all about ignoring balance and ease and forcing movement in spite of the pain the unbalance generates. Flow moves around the boulders in the way while straight-line movement requires you to smash through them.
Every day is the opportunity for a first step. Right now your life is mostly a mountain of compromises designed to keep you comfortable. To make your first step you must be willing to be uncomfortable…in fact you have to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Comfort is about predictable sameness. Stepping up to change is about not having the same old life, but constantly creating a new life…a life that fulfills you more, enriches you more, becomes you more. Your new life awaits you…all it takes is one little step…The First Step.