Real & Lasting Change
How do we make real, lasting change?
To become who you want to be, you must give up who you are now. To have the things you want, you must be willing to give up the things you have now. To go new places, you must leave where you are.
Many people, if not all, desire some kind of change. They desire for more, better, or both. They spend much time thinking about it as well. What most these same people also do, is none of the things that change requires. Many people are not willing to embrace that they themselves will have to give up what they have and what they are in exchange to have what they want to have and be who they want to be. How do people who make real, lasting change differ from these people?
The people who make real change make definitive choices everyday. They are deliberate with their actions and intentions. They do not wait for the winds of change to take them up and away to new things. People who make change have direction, vision, and a means to facilitate it. A plan, a system and real measurable goals.
What is the key to becoming a person who can make change real in their life?
You have to decide that the discomfort of re-living the same problems, the same experiences, the same people, the same places, and the same day over and over is more uncomfortable than choosing to disrupt the loop or the pattern.
Consider a river. Just like us, it flows in one direction. It cannot turn back and travel to where it begins. You should also consider the path of a river over time. While it only flows in one direction, over time where the river flows and the path it takes to get there changes. The Colorado River that carved out the Grand Canyon is not the same river we know it as today. It does not flow to many of the same places it once did, and does not flow as violently as it once had. The river has receded from the places as a way to maintain its path.
We must be the same.
We must able to pull away from places, people, and things that demand us to distribute our attention and time away from our path. We must be able to carve out our way through anything that may stand in front of us and recede from all the side channels that may form over time during our pursuit. If you cannot do this, you, like a river, will dry up and trickle away before ever reaching the final destination.
All of Earth's mightiest rivers truly flow to the ocean, not lakes or ponds.
Again, let us consider the Colorado River. A great river that once flowed to the ocean. Now it is diverted, dammed, and redistributed before ever reaching the ocean.
Even after reaching our destination, our goals, we must work to maintain our new way of being, otherwise outside forces will work to draw us away from it. We must make continual changes at all time to keep us on our path. We must constantly make these changes to prevent stagnation and recession from our way. We must always be trimming the fat, killing bad habits, vices, and distractions.
Real lasting change is made from the act of constant change, as away to keep us changing in the right way. Most importantly, we must make the right changes for the right reasons.
This is the true way.
