Making personal changes work

Change, one of my favourite words. Change stands for a challenge, a chance to turn something into a better version. A chance to make the transition to 2.0. Of course, change is also something that disturbs the pattern. So it's okay to be a bit nervous about it. After a change, you can't keep doing things the same way - that's the definition of change. On the other hand, changes make life more interesting and in that way contribute to our happiness.

The opportunities for changes in life are relatively easy to detect, and not only because the multitude of flaws in personal action patterns. With an honest outlook on one's behavior, it shouldn't be too hard. Personally I rather often feel a twinge about something that I do, and I know that it could be much better. I can do it. Yes I can. I just need to make a bit of effort.

Well, often that's exactly how far I get, and no further.

Too often, the actual change never happens, despite my strong disposition that it has to change. Thoughts never transfer into actions. Frankly, that bugs me a lot. It seems like a pretty stupid thing to do: deciding that you want to change and then not making it happen. Why is that? More importantly, how to make it work? How to change the changing?

I used to be very confident about my strength of willpower. I used to think that I just need to decide for a change and it'll happen. True enough, sometimes it does, but mostly not. Mostly, I get stuck between the action and decision phase, not because the change is so complex, so difficult or so frightening, but because I just don't make it happen. It's like there would be something wrong between the neurons transferring the information from the decision-making centre to the "let's do this" branch of my brain. What's even more stupid: I know the change is supposed to be happening, but it's not. And I know it's my fault - who else could I blame for failing to change? So, in the end I feel sad for disregarding my own instructions and not changing, making the situation worse, not better! Not very smart.

Fortunately, I've discovered a way to reroute this blockade in my mind. One trick I've learned over time is to not try abstract leaps.The change needs to be tied to something concrete. The change needs to happen with some concrete thing. Sometimes I've focused my idea of the change and focused it on an object, so that whenever I see that object I immediately think of the change I want to achieve. Quite naturally, this works best with an object you perceive positively and somehow associate with the change. For example, as I was trying to increase my levels of writing and reading, I focused it on my coffee mug. Now whenever I see the coffee mug, I go "well, I should probably read or write something now". And lo and behold, during the last months I've been reading and writing more than ever - and my instant coffee jar has emptied, twice!

Another trick is to change in parts. If the upcoming change looms too large, divide it to subprojects. This is a piece of advice told to me several times at organizational development lectures, but only now have I learned to apply it to myself. As an example I can tell about a research project that I'm doing. The goal is to a) get to know the business ethics field, b) see if there's a connection between the position in organizational hierarchy and ethical decision making. This project will last for a good 6 months, so I divided it into subprojects. So far, I'm mostly in schedule, meaning about halfway through. Will sure be interesting how the end part goes.

An exchange year has been a good way to make changes and take chances, exactly as I had hoped. I'd recommend it as a way to escape the current environment if big changes are what you want. Go abroad and discover yourself in a new way. Discover yourself in a new way - that could be a motto for most personal changes. Or at least it should be.

New outsides, new insides

Hey, new layout! I got seriously bored of the old, boring brown layout that made me feel like I'm watching something made in the 70s, hastily digitized by the original creator. Pure horror. So, enter new slick layout, which seriously tested both my HTML and photo editing skills. Hope I can coerce somebody to draw me a new logo in the future, too. I can't even draw a stickman myself.

Layout is just the perceptional layer, however. And my ramblings have never been about changing the outside, I strive to write about changing the inside. Every once in a while I get asked "why do you write?". It's quite simple, really. I want to change my inside layer, too. I want to think better, think more clearly. I want to argue better. I want to know, how I really feel about something.

And if anybody reads my text and feels a tinge of improvement, gets a new idea, a new perspective or has a laugh, I already feel I've justified the trouble. Regardless if that anybody is just me, just one other person or 5000 people, even one mind on the way to more clarity, better arguments and - hopefully - a notion of happiness is a victory.

The attic of my mind

The attic. The place where we take all our junk. All the things that now seem so useless, so unworthy of our care. We don't want to look after them anymore, because they have been replaced by something else. Something, which glimmers betters in the sun, smells nicer or looks less rugged. We grasp that new shiny wonder and throw our old stuff away from sight, away, to be forgotten.

But sometimes we climb up the stairs to the top floor, take the ladder from the closet, open he hatch and climb up to the attic.

We casually browse the contents of the boxes, occasionally picking up something. Almost everything reminds of something and brings back a wave of memories. Look, there's the old tea set you got from your aunt, and there's that old toy you played with as a kid. Sometimes we can't remember why we tossed something away in the first place. "This shouldn't be here, I can still use it", we catch ourselves thinking. We keep it in our hand, holding on to it tightly almost as if it could run back to the box and lock itself in. Carefully, we carry it back down and place it in our favorite spot above the fireplace, where we can see it every day.

The same is true of ideas.