Why is Change so Hard?

Let's face it... change is hard.  It really is.   The fact is change hits all of us every day in a myriad of different ways and waves. Most of the time it is painful.

Do you typically feel that when you experience change, it usually feels like something happened "to" you vs. "for "you? 

Especially if the change wasn't something you were the author of rather the victim of....

What seems so ironic to me is that everything we know about change is that it is inevitable in all aspects of our lives, yet, we typically resist change when it occurs.  I find the tension between the absolute primal need humans seem to have to progress and grow and the incredible resistance that is so often propped up by those same humans to prevent change from happening so fascinating.

Although I have my own unique point of view, all of us are subject matter experts when it comes to change due to the fact that change is so elemental to the fabric of our lives.    As a guy who moved constantly from country to country growing up, the proverbial pool I swam in was a constant churn of change--new people, new schools, new cultures, new languages, new customs, new sounds and smells......  Although I was taught to view change as a positive thing, I developed a particular perspective that taught me 3 key lessons:

1.  Change is almost ALWAYS personal

2.  Change is almost ALWAYS emotional

3.  Change is almost ALWAYS messy

Because at least in my experience these 3 things always happen, I have come to appreciate better why so many people struggle with change, even when self-inflicted or self-produced.  It is because when these 3 things happen the next thing almost always happens:

R E S I S T A N C E 

We resist change like crazy for the most part.  What is so crazy interesting to me is that we, in certain roles have no empathy for this principle yet in other roles we totally do.  Let me try to explain:

As managers, parents or teachers we initiate change all the time.  We introduce it to our children or our employees constantly.  And yet when they seem to "resist" or "not obey" we grow impatient and often frustrated because they don't comply as quickly as we would like.   On the other hand, in our other roles of being children, siblings, employees or students and experience the receiving end of change we resist just as much!   

 In other words, It is ok if I make my kids' life crazy and expect them to be happy with change I introduce, but then at work it is completely ok for me to be very defensive, non-cooperative and resistant to changes that occur if I don't agree with them.

How many times did we as parents inform our kids about a new change -- (ie Moving the family back from NY to Utah) and expect them to be totally fine with the idea.  We couldn't seem to understand why one would start crying, another would be screaming for joy, another would be totally silent and yet another was saying "ok" on the outside, but was dying on the inside.  Then we would get emotional and try all the wrong messages to quickly corral them into the barn of "happiness" in order to make ourselves feel good instead of helping them move through the idea.  This never happens to you right?

The key is that we are responsible for moving ourselves through change, no one else is.  Yep, it means we have to be "big" girls and boys and grow up.  Nothing reduces us to our true selves like change.  You want to check to see just how mature you really are take a big look into the change mirror and see how you react.  There is a very slippery slope of allowing yourself to become a "VICTIM" vs a "VICTOR" of change.  The deepness and wideness of the chasm is vastly different depending upon which perspective and attitude you choose to embrace.  Both are charged with emotion, but one can mire you in the dip of despair and takes a lot longer to move through vs the other where you muster the courage to face and move through change as quickly as possible.

By shifting our perspective just a bit, we can leverage change as a powerful influence in our own and others lives.  If we know these 3 things about change and then always remember that people resist change then we are armed with knowledge that we can use..... we need to manage our expectations knowing these dynamics.  We can prepare people more carefully, we can now be more patient because we now anticipate and expect resistance instead of secretly hoping that people will just simply be happy with changes that happen to them.  In other words, plan on these 3 things and just knowing that can make a significant difference.  It has for me.  We now involve our kids much differently so they are actually helping "design" the change vs. being the nail that waits for the parental hammer of change to eventually hit.  

The other really cool thing about knowing these dynamics and principles of change is that it is entirely OK to be emotional when change happens.  It is inevitable and very ok to feel whatever it is that is felt.  The issue is that we tend to place a value of "Good" or "Bad" to these varying emotions when change happens.  All emotions are ok during change.  There is no such thing as "Good" or "Bad" when it comes to these emotions.  They just are..... we can't put a value judgment on them just because we have stupid expectations of what they should be.  Knowing this and learning how to alter our expectations can be hugely helpful to us and them.

So, pausing for a sec.... do you agree?  Maybe with a few things....?  I am ok with that.  Think about the different changes in your life....... what did you feel?  For how long?  What got you through? Think about your different roles....  Can you see yourself in this picture?   I hope I can just reflect the mirror back on your for a moment in order to assess how mature you are in your journey of change.   

Do I have it all figured out?  No...but I can say that understanding these simple dynamics of change have made a world of difference for me and mine.  I have learned to embrace change.....to make it happen......to anticipate it......yes, even to love it.  I think it is the only thing that makes us grow and stretch in our lives.  Who wants to be "warm safe and dry" at the expense of growing and maturing into the people we are meant to be.  What a huge regret it would be if we look back and see what could have been if only we had modified our view just a hair differently with respect to change that we experience in our lives.   I love how it rips us out of comfort zones, mediocrity, staleness, complacency and stagnation and how it can open our eyes to new vistas, horizons and eternal progression....

....... So take some bite size steps today to help you through whatever pain change has brought you.  keep moving....and good luck!!

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance

-- Alan Watts

Lessons in Choreography

cho·re·og·ra·phy

noun \ˌkȯr-ē-ˈä-grə-fē\ : the art or job of deciding how dancers will move in a performance;

 I experienced something pretty amazing today that I must share.  Today in Church, during our main congregational meeting members in the audience were invited to come up and share spiritual experiences or feelings regarding their faith.   Usually adults are more prone to share personal things in front of a pretty large crowd than younger folk.  Today a 'younger folk' about the age of 8 made the long walk from the back of the room with intent in her stride.  She came up to the podium, pulled the microphone down to her level, and began a very earnest delivery......

"You all know that I love to act"  she began....  Next came:   "I have pretty much done it since I was like uhm...4".  "I have done a lot of plays and an important part of acting means that you always have choreography"....  

I looked out at the audience and saw lot's of smiles.  What I mostly saw was that she had every single pair of eyes fixed on her waiting anxiously to what she was going to say next.

"Choreography means that you have to learn steps in order to do the play right."  "So, I have to try very hard to learn all the steps in order to do the play right,  so I practice a lot"

I will just pause here for a sec....  

First of all, she had me at "You all know that I love to act".  No, I didn't know that, but felt admittedly guilty that somehow I should have.  She had that way about her.  If only I could convey with words her flawless delivery, the effortless confidence and her absolute matter-of-factness you might be able to truly taste what it might have been like......

Second, there is something not quite right about a second grader throwing around vocabulary like "Choreography" and then being so kind to make sure, we, the adults in the audience would be sure to understand so she explained it real simple like so we could "follow".  It should have felt condescending or pompous... but no, it was pure child-like honesty.

Third, I have never heard a better explanation ever......!  And I think my mom, a professional choreographer and dancer would agree with me.

"So, I was thinking......  If learning the right steps to do a play right is important, then maybe like Choreography, it is important to know the right steps to return to God."

Uhm.... ExquEEZE me??!!    


"I have been baptized so that is good... that is one of the steps.  But I need to figure out the next ones in order to get all the way back."

"So, I have decided that it is really important to figure these out, so I am going to do that.  I am going to figure out all the next steps, practice hard and then I can get back to God."
 
Then she sat down.....   She hushed the crowd.  Everyone was trying to figure out if she was for real or not.  For me, I didn't even hear the next 4 speakers.... I was lost in a different place.  For a guy who really likes metaphors and connecting them to life I was really thrown in a most excellent way.  This little girl blew me away!...   Here is what I learned:

1.  She knows who she is in the most profound way.  She is a daughter of God.  She wasn't wasting anytime talking about how she was going to make Mom and Dad proud of her acting.. oh no, she was way beyond that "childish" game.

2.  She nailed the doctrine of eternal progression.  That we all are here to prove ourselves, to "practice" to try and learn our path and the "steps" to get back to Heaven if we want to. She really wants to.

3.  She knew, somehow, that the performing arts from her vantage point were simply a means to a much more spectacular and grander end.  She saw the end game at 8 years old.  She was connecting some major life dots that most never do.

4.  She was willing to share this simple but so profound formula with the rest of the world..... that being our local congregation.    Honestly, I don't think it mattered how many were in the audience in the least!  She needed to inform us of what she was going to do as if to challenge us to see if we would do the same.

She did more to cause me to think if I actually knew what the next steps in my life were than anyone else that spoke.  I felt her unasked invitation penetrate my heart and really made me take a few minutes to take stock of where I was and what I needed to do next.

Mom always taught a whole dance to others by breaking it up into small chunks of steps and movement.  She would teach little steps and then have us practice them until we became really good at each one.  We would often tire of the repetitive process of practicing seemingly boring and uninteresting steps that seemed to have no rhyme or reason in and of themselves.  It was only after many hours of practice that we started to see the beauty and grace of stringing steps together into patterns and rhythms that would end up as an entire dance.  Only when we saw how the small steps linked to the whole story did we see.  I think that happens a lot to us with the choreography of our lives.   We think the daily routine is too tedious, too insignificant and we fail to see the bigger picture of how each or day leads to weeks, months and ultimately an entire life full of little steps.

Mom would always teach in front, leading and showing us the way, ever so patient as we fumbled with technique.  She knew what the whole story and dance looked like.  That is what gave her the will to wait and watch us master the steps and then put feeling into them which ultimately brought us closer to her vision of what the dance was really about, and also what would bring us the most joy as well.  This little girl somehow knew that God was doing the same thing, leading out in front, being the example, showing us patiently the way, asking for us to have faith in the little steps so that one day the collective sum of all them would lead to a beautiful legacy and reunion.

I am figuring out my next steps right now....  I feel more urgency today than I did yesterday.  And I know I am going to have to practice a bit harder now than ever before because this particular performance is different and has a most amazing finish because of how the story ends.  I want this one too.  I just needed a little reminder about how important it really is to me....

.....I learned some lessons in Choreography today,  I wonder what story the steps of your dance is telling you....