How to Change Your Life in 2009....For Real

It’s a new year, and you might be thinking about some changes you would like to make. But if you’re like most of us, you tend to get pretty excited about those changes for a little while, but find it challenging to make them stick. I know plenty of folks who buy treadmills in January, only to be using them as clothing racks by the end of February. Do you want this year to be different?

Someone once taught me an equation for how people change: P + V > R. P, which represents “Pain,” combines with V (“vision”) to overcome R, which represents “resistance.” What’s the resistance all about? As humans, our tendency is to stick with what is familiar, even if it’s not working for us. It’s the idea that the hell we do know is better than the one we don’t. We’re hanging on so tightly to what we already have that we can’t let go long enough to even consider how life might change or get better, even if what we’re attached to is actually decreasing our happiness on a daily basis. This reminds me of my dog, who loves nothing more than to chase her ball. But she won’t let go of it so that we can throw it. She sits there, miserable, guarding the ball and growling-sort of a metaphor for the way a lot of us live.

Resistance is pretty powerful stuff. It can take a lot of forms: inertia, lack of motivation, negative self-talk, excuses, procrastination or anxiety. I often experience it as busyness. When I was working on my thesis and had a deadline, I had a sudden, inexplicable urge to reorganize every kitchen cabinet. A lot of this resistance is the same thing: fear. Fear of change or fear of failure (“it’s better to just stick to the way that things are, because it’s safer that way”) or a fear of this new, sudden, unrecognizable person we might become if we just allowed ourselves the space to grow.

So how do some people overcome resistance and make changes? Well, sometimes you don’t have a choice. Sometimes the choice is made for you. A situation becomes so painful (P) that it becomes more comfortable to change than to stay in your current situation. Change is not an option. Or sometimes you have such a powerful idea or vision for your life (V) that your excitement and hope empowers you to overcome resistance to change, and you transform your life.

What if it’s something in the middle? What if you’re mildly uncomfortable, and know you want some kind of change, but don’t know what exactly that is? In this scenario, P+V might not be strong enough to overcome R, so how do you increase your odds? Increase the pain, and increase the vision.

“Increase the pain?!? Are you crazy?” I’m sure that’s what you’re saying, but stay with me. Odds are that if you’re getting some clues that you are unhappy or uncomfortable with a situation, you are in more pain than you think. Humans do a wonderful job of disguising our discomfort-it’s a coping strategy for surviving day-to-day life. Just think-if you started to really pay attention to the various parts of your life that are hurting, it might feel overwhelming (and then you might have to make some major change, which is scary, so we’re back to resistance again). This is why nearly every therapist I know (myself included) has a disclosure statement that new clients sign which tells them that sometimes it feels like things get worse before they get better, and that is actually part of the therapeutic process. As you gain awareness, it starts to hurt a whole lot more for a little bit. That’s ok: it’s unpleasant, but you WILL survive. To increase your V (vision), you can create and become comfortable with a compelling vision of how you will feel and be after you’ve made changes in your life, and you need to stay connected to that vision-it will help you overcome resistance when you get stuck.

So here are some concrete tips to put this into action. I’ll use the example here of losing weight, since that’s a popular subject of conversation. To increase P, start to make a list of all the ways that carrying extra weight might be affecting your life. Maybe you don’t enjoy buying clothes as much as you used to, or you can’t participate in the physical activities that you could if you were in better shape. Write these things down. Keep a journal-any time during the day that you notice a discomfort around this issue, write it down. Read it. Maybe you notice that you don’t feel that much pain. Maybe you do.

Now, start creating a vision. Write it down. What would life look like if you were in better shape or you felt healthier? How would you feel different? What would you be able to do? Let yourself be excited about this new vision. Odds are, if you get connected with your pain, as well as with your vision, you will feel motivated to start to change.

This exercise can be applied to any goal. If you want to change jobs, get connected with the pain you feel in your current situation, and start to envision a new, better situation, one in which you are at your best and feel creative and appreciated.

We don’t want to feel or notice our pain, but awareness is the starting point for all change, for everyone. We all have the capacity to transform our lives, every day. In the words of the poet, Rumi, “You were born with wings/why prefer to crawl through life?”

Why Now Is Actually a Time of Opportunity

I’m not sure what I was expecting as the economy worsened, but I have been surprised. Part of me expected (worried) that people might decide that now wasn’t a great time to hire a personal coach, or that it is best to just keep one’s head down and survive until things clear up a bit. Boy was I wrong-I should have known better. I deal in matters of the heart (or soul, depending on how you look at it), and it shouldn’t have surprised me at all that many have actually been emboldened by this time.

Here’s what’s happening: I’m seeing many, many clients who were able to stay very busy for many years. Their busyness allowed them to forget or escape the feeling that, deep down, they just weren’t that into their work. Now, things have slowed down. There’s a lot of empty space (read: time and quiet). They’re suddenly noticing all the feelings of discomfort they have managed to suppress for a long time, and the discomfort is so intense that they are ready to make a change.   Or maybe they notice that they haven't felt creatively engaged in their work for quite some time, and now, with more time and space, they have the chance to reevaluate how they work and how they might bring more spark into their existing job.

Many people have noticed something else: all their energy has been focused in the area of career. When they become less successful in that area due to economic downturns, there is nowhere else to go. They have few hobbies, friends, or relationships, and sometimes don’t even know how to spend time alone. They don’t know what to do with themselves.  Life has been out of balance, and now is a perfect time of opportunity to reevaluate how they spend their time and energy, and what is most important to them.

Here’s another thing that’s happening: making good money was an excuse for a long time. For many, it’s hard to justify making a big change to follow your dream when you’re making lots of money in your current situation. Well, for many, the pressure is now off. No longer making the money they once did, people find it easier to admit, for instance, as one client did last week, “You know, I’ve always wanted to be a chef anyway. Maybe it’s time to explore that.”  Here’s a link to an article I read in the New York Times on a banker who is now pursuing his lifelong dream to be a comedian. My favorite quote from the article: “Everyone seems to have something else they would rather be doing than their 9-to-5,”….. “I think that people who are losing their jobs are being forced to pursue their dreams and, in a way, are being liberated from the golden handcuffs of Wall Street and venturing into something that might fulfill them.”

Do you know what GE, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft all have in common? They all started in times of economic instability. No matter how the companies ended up, they started with someone’s idea. The soul doesn’t pay attention to economic indicators: when there is a dream or idea, it wants to be heard and heeded.

I named my company “Empty Space” because I believe that everything starts with ambiguity, curiosity, not knowing what comes next. When we start at that place, ready to question everything and strip away everything that is not working and is not authentic, change is not only possible, it is inevitable. It feels like the scariest time, but it is actually the time of greatest possibility.  Now is the time to be bold, to try all the big ideas you were scared to try, to make the changes that felt too risky a year ago.
The empty space may feel like an ending, but it’s actually just the beginning of a new, transformed life.

The "Does It Love Me?" Diet

When I was recently visiting my in-laws in New York City for the holidays, we attended a dinner with two other couples. I ate a lot, starting with the cheese biscuits that were placed on the table at the beginning of the meal (they remind me a lot of the sort of thing that people eat in Georgia, where I grew up, which is to say that the biscuits were completely laden with cheese, grease, and fat and were utterly delicious). I felt stuffed after eating two of them. From there, I proceeded to large portions of lobster bisque, scallops, and berry trifle for dessert. I must admit that I had to loosen the zipper of my skirt a bit (attractive, I know) so that I could sit more comfortably, but it’s the holidays, after all, right?

So when the waiter came around to refill our wine glasses, I knew that I couldn’t ingest one more drop of anything into my system and refused, particularly since I don’t feel so good if I drink after I’ve eaten so much. My mother-in-law also passed, as red wine doesn’t agree with her so well. The man seated between us asked why we weren’t drinking. I went into a long and boring explanation of how wine doesn’t always agree with me if I’m really full, how much I had eaten (leaving out the unzipped skirt part, of course), how drinking too late at night really disrupts my sleep. My mother-in-law simply said, “Wine doesn’t love me.” She felt no further need for excuses or justification.

I thought about this exchange for the next couple of days. Women spend a lot of time thinking about what we SHOULDN’T eat, and categorizing food as bad and good, based on either their caloric or fat value, depending on how you measure these things. Most women can look at a single Triscuit and tell you exactly how many calories it has (7.5). We often spend most of our lives trying to avoid the bad food and eat more of the food that the experts tell us we should eat. Sometimes I read the health articles on the front page of Yahoo (you know the ones, they have titles like, “The Top Ten Foods and Drinks You Should Be Consuming Daily”) and afterwards, find myself spiraling downward, worrying about how I could possibly squeeze copious amounts of pomengranates, sweet potatoes, blueberries, lentils, broccoli, tomatoes, salmon, kale, yogurt , and 10 gallons of green tea into my DAILY diet. And the article says I have to eat that EVERY DAY for the REST OF MY LIFE if I want to avoid cancer.

Now, I agree that I feel better when I eat fruit and vegetables than when I eat, for instance, large servings of cheese biscuits. My body feels better. But I haven’t always focused on what my body wants. I’ve given the other part more airtime: the part of me that knows the caloric impact of everything, the part of me that feels smug when I eat what experts tell me I “should” eat, and feels punitive and guilty when I eat what I shouldn’t. Well, I’ve decided that I’m going to stop doing that. From now on, I only eat what loves me. “Loves me” means it makes my body feel good, in both the short term and long term. To quote a phrase I like for this in psychology, I'm going to stop “shoulding” on myself so much. "Loves me" means eating slowly, with awareness of how something is making my body feel. No matter what any expert tells me about how many servings of whole wheat I need to eat, I know that I feel puffy and irritable when I eat it. So I'm just not going to eat it, because wheat doesn't love me.

I love this idea. It can be applied to all areas of our lives. I started applying it to my closet when I was doing the Massive Closet Reorganization of January 3, 2009. I culled out all the itchy sweaters who don’t love me, tight shoes who don’t love me, a turquoise scarf I want to love, but whose color is just not that into me. It doesn’t love me. Likewise, people who waste my time or energy do not love me. Greedy people and politicians with angry politics do not love me. I could keep going with this.

Here’s my suggestion to you: make two lists. On one list, write the foods, people and situations that don’t love you. On the other one, make another list: everything and everyone who loves you. Every week, see what you can do to reduce your exposure to who and what doesn’t love you in the way you deserve to be loved. Pick one think off the list and bring less of it into your life. And each week, pick one thing off the list of people and situations that love you and bring a bit more of it into your life. Small steps count here, and they really add up.

As for me, I’m looking forward to a year of less bleach, wheat, celebrity gossip sites, and scratchy sweaters, and more soft sheets, dark chocolate, local organic food, knitting, yoga, the color blue, the music of Lucinda Williams, time with family, and conversations with the friends who leave me with a happy feeling after I hang up the phone.