So you want to your aspects of your life. It doesn’t have to be every aspect. It could be only one. Yet there’s something you want to change. If you don’t know what it is, that’s alright. Take 5 to 10 minutes to sit quietly and think about this.
- Who do you want to be?
- What makes you happy?
- What makes you unhappy?
If need to, grab a piece of paper and a pen and start journaling (or as I have done from time to time, brain dump.) Just start writing. Don’t worry about grammar and punctuation errors. Just start writing to get the ideas down on paper. Close your eyes if you need to.
In the article Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, to make changes stick, it requires practice. And it starts in the brain. Doing and redoing over and over and over and over again to break old neural habits.
You can start by just envisioning who you want to be. Do you want to start a new line of work? Do you want to be single? It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in the same line of work for 20 years. Or haven’t been single in decades. Don’t let your fears hold you back or being in your head hold you back.
Then find out who you are. Ask friends, family and coworkers. You might not like what they have to say, yet to clean out our closets, you have to take out what’s in there to see what you’re working with. If you get too much news that’s worse than you thought, take a few deep breaths. Then think about if you really want to change all the negative feedback. Start small. With only one thing you want to change. (Again, you have to want to make the change in order for it to work. You don’t have to change every single thing.) For example, if you want to be more physically active, start taking a 5-minute walk everyday. You want to work on calming your anxious mind? Close your eyes, focus on your breathing and what happens when an anxious thought enters your mind for one minute. Breathe.
The benefits of change could be better than you think.
In the article, Managing Change in Uncertain Times: A Case Study, at the beginning of the Covid pandemic,Delta asked their past customers why they were hesitant to fly. Even though Delta had already implemented precautions, Delta discovered that people were afraid of being seated next to a stranger. So Delta temporarily stopped selling tickets for the middle seat. While initially their profits took a hit, their revenue was 12% higher than the average of American, United and Southwest airlines combined.
For the longest time, I was in my head about starting a new line of work. Completely new. I’d started questions with, “Maybe I’m overthinking this…” or “Maybe I’m in my head too much, but…” (And I was.) I had no idea what being a copywriter meant. I thought it meant writing bad commercial ads for crap I wouldn’t use if you paid me. So happy I was wrong. Immeasurably happy. If you start most of your thought with, “Maybe I’m overthinking this…” or “Maybe I’m in my head too much, but…” you will talk yourself out of the game before you even start. I guarantee it and that’s the only guarantee I’ll make.
We fear change because it takes us into unknown territory. In the INC article, Science Says This Is Why You Fear Change (and What to Do About it.) according to neuroscience, our brain registers change similar to the way it does an error. It needs to be corrected before we feel comfortable again.
Psychology Today’s article How to Overcome the Fear of Change, Gustavo Razzetti says We fear change because we can’t anticipate the outcome. Our imagination, driven by our fear, can run wild with possible outcomes. Keyword: possible. (Yet are those outcomes likely to happen?)
Ask yourself: What if things turn out better than you thought?
Razzetti also talks about us getting left behind if we don’t change. It can seem like a damned if you, damned if you don’t scenario. How happy will you be if you stay at a dead-end job? For me staying in the familiar, while wondering, “Will anyone read my novel? Why should I even bother?” is so much worse than it being rejected by published. Because I won’t know what will happen unless I try. It’s true that it might not get published, yet I can’t bear the thought of being on my death bed wondering what could have happened if I didn’t at least try something new.
Not sure what new line of work you want to do? Volunteer. Follow your curiosity and NOT your passion. Ask questions. Per Simon Sinek, start with your Why? Why do you want to change? Also follow Brene Brown’s advice when she said, “Never look for reasons you don’t belong because you’ll always find them.” Don’t worry about being the new person in the group. Admit what you don’t know. I promise it won’t kill you. (I speak from experience.) Also be kind to yourself for being in new territory. Give yourself some grace. You’re going to make mistakes. Yes, it would be nice if we knew what we are doing all the time so we wouldn’t make mistakes. Yet that’s not realistic.
They say getting started is the hardest part. That is true. Possibly because we want our first attempt to be perfect. Ernest Hemingway says, “The first draft of anything is sh!t.” What made Hemingway good was his consistency to his work. You are not going to know how to do anything if you don’t try. (Zip it Yoda! Love you but zip it.) You have to practice and fail and continuously work on your life, career, novel, baking skills, whatever you want to improve. Getting rejected shows you are at least trying. Yes failure and rejection suck. The trick is to keep getting up after being knocked down. Walt Disney kept getting rejected. He was told he lacked imagination. Yeah, the guy who invented the cartoon was told he lacked imagination.
Netflix was laughed at by Blockbuster and told they wouldn’t become anything. (BTW, Netflix was the reason Blockbuster went out of business.)
It’s funny how our fears of the small things can have a ripple effect on our thoughts. In the article Overcoming fear: Celebs share inspiring stories about overcoming fear, Designer Joanna Gaines, feared the small decision of selecting paint colors. Which she says lead to thinking she was no good at designing houses. Actor Will Smith wanted to face his fears and went skydiving for his fiftieth birthday. He said facing his fear was life changing. “You can’t be happy if you’re scared.” And NBA star Kevin Love had a panic attack during a game. He wants people to know facing anxiety is scary and common. He faced a lot of fears being open about his mental health concerns. He believes vulnerability can help others. As much as we think celebrities are superhuman, they aren’t. We only see so much of their life. We don’t know what they are thinking, all the work they did before becoming famous or successful.
At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves, Do we want to continue on current path of misery or do we want to follow our curiosity? I’ll take curiosity any day, all day, everyday.
Which would you choose? Let me know in the comments below.
Reinventing yourself 
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