Change

Change is a funny thing. It can bring us new financial opportunities, a new viewpoint, a new experience, maybe even take us to someplace we have never been to before. Why is it that people regard change with such disdain? Maybe it’s because we have had experiences with “change” that didn’t work out so well. For every new financial opportunity, there could be a thief lurking, for every new viewpoint, illogical propaganda, for every new experience, a scar, for every new place, an old familiar sense of despair. Change is scary. But it is better to confront the scariness willingly in hope of something better than to be blindsided by unknown complications due to the unwillingness to adapt. Once you decide that “okay, I’ll risk it for the biscuit“ , and start to welcome change in your own life (either because you’re bored of the current situation or because you have decided to “roll with the punches”) life will start to open up.

Now I have been talking about external changes so far and these are things usually mostly beyond our control. Yes maybe you did get that job, but the skill set you’ve been acquiring is what landed you that interview; or that sort of thing. There is another type of change which is arguably much more difficult to bring about.

This change is the internal one. The type of change that can change your default face from a constant frown to a friendly smile. This type of change can obliterate your entire worldview and leave you starting from scratch. It can be brought about not by natural disaster or military crisis, but something as trivial as the person in front of you comping your coffee; the only price being that they ask you to pay it forward. It isn’t usually this dramatic or simple though, it’s not common for someone to have experience, change a huge thing, and then “never doing (fill in the blank) again!”. This is not uncommon though.

Try examining an average day, look at from a perspective that time wasted is actually a disservice to yourself . Are there things in your life that don’t actually have a real benefit. What about if the excuses “I’m relaxing” or “It helps me decompress” are thrown out the window? Now I am not saying you should never relax. But I am saying that human potential and efficiency is nearly unlimited; and that if you don’t like something that occurs on a regular basis, there is something you can do to make it better.

One fairly common thing people like to change about themselves is an addiction. There are an estimated 18million people in the US who are addicted to alcohol (I’m sure the real number is much bigger but these are the ones who admit it). The most well-known way to combat addiction is the 12 step program or some form of it created by Bill Wilson. This program is used in AA, NA, and many others.

The steps are as follow:

1. Admitting that a substance has control over yourself and it’s made life difficult
2. Come to believe that a power higher than yourself can restore us to a better way of living
3. Make a decision to turn our will and lives over to God as we understand God
4. Create a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
5. Admit to God and you’re fellow humans the exact nature of our your wrongs
6. Become entirely ready to have this higher power remove all these defects of character
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings
8. Make a list of all persons we have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all
9. Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
10. Continued to take personal inventory and we do wrong promptly admit it
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the results of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and practice these principles in all our affairs.

So having read these steps you might think hmm, this sounds suspiciously like religious teaching. Many of the places the 12 steps are listed the term higher power and God replace one another at some point. I do believe however the term God is appropriate because whatever you let control, or believe controls you is your God. It is however interesting, how the majority of these steps are contingent with you forming a relationship with a higher power. AA is a household name it it is a way to teach God to people who are quite literally lost in the sauce. How wonderful is that? The higher power doesn’t always have to be God as you think of him as some big man in the sky, but the higher power could be the love for your child, or family members.

The point I’m trying to make here is that change can be extremely beneficial, and while it requires you to have a certain attitude, you must also work with others to fix big stuff.

No man (or woman) is an island, I’m gonna leave you with some words my sister wrote to me when she was a high-school senior and I was a fishy in the school newspaper. “Everyone is put in your life by God for a reason, use them!”

love you sis <3