Change happens. It’s the only constant in the universe. I’ve heard so many people say that people don’t change but of course they do. They change all the time. They have experiences, they interact with an every changing universe, they are who they are and in every moment they are becoming more. So what does it take to change? Well, Saul had a revelation on the road to Damascus, but that doesn’t happen to as many people as you might think. Although a large number of people act as if it will. They wait for the lightning bolt to strike, for the teacher/guru that will tell them what they need to know to understand life and the universe, for the “aha” that will make it all make sense, or for the person who will open their eyes to their special purpose in this life so they can start being the hero they know they are instead of the aimless wanderer they seem to be.
So, barring an angel’s intercession, how do we make changes in our life? How do we figure out our purpose, get our energy moving, balance our life so that we get as much as we give, and live our best life, by doing it. Waiting for things to happen is like any other habit. It’s something we’ve come to accept as the way we do things and we don’t even think about it any more. It’s something we do automatically like chewing on pens or smoking or driving one specific way home each night. So how do we stop waiting? Same way we change any habit, force ourselves to pay attention to what we do and when we start doing that, stop and make a different choice. It’s hard, it’s exhausting, it’s frustrating, we will fail repeatedly, but the only way to change a habit is to become aware of it and choose to make a new one.
One of the Yoga sutras that I appreciate the most speaks to this. “ “Practice becomes firmly grounded when continued for a long time, without interruption and with reverent devotion.” If we want to change, the way to make a change is to focus on the doing of it, not the failure to do it or the desire to do it, but the doing. Keep going back to it, commit to it, keep it up, and in the end you succeed. A side effect of this process is that in doing it, whether we achieve our goals or not, we create trust in ourselves. In following through with what we say we will do we honor ourselves, show ourselves reverent devotion, and what better change to make than that?
