A Long Post On Change

[Tim Brownson]

I posted this over the last 2 days on my Blog and thought I'd sahre it. It's long but I thought some of you here that were struggling with change would get a modicum of help from it.

>>I have posted about change several times before and I make no apologies for doing so now, so if you’re groaning and/or rolling your eyes stop it now and pay attention because this is really important stuff.

On a physical level our bodies are changing on a minute-by-minute basis. I once read that we regenerate a liver approximately every 6 months. I’m not sure what it does with all these new livers because I know I haven’t got a box with over 150 livers in, but you get my gist. By the way, that time span could be wrong so don’t think you can go drinking yourself into a stupor and then wait for a new liver to materialize 6 months down the road and make everything better again. I was just making a point about change and quite frankly one that I wished I’d not bothered with now. Next time remind me to use fingernails as an example.

Not only do we change physically but mentally we are also in a constant state of flux. Your values can and do change as do your beliefs and those two things dictate your identity, which in turn changes. Your emotions can change from moment to moment, as I am sure you know. Think of the best day of your life for 10 seconds and I guarantee that will cause an instant change in you. Outside of our bodies we change too. Friends come and go, loved ones die, we change jobs and even careers, move homes, buy new clothes, eat different food, travel to new countries and dabble in all sort sof things that we wished we’d never dabbled in.

So why oh why do we have so much trouble accepting change consciously when it’s going on all the time?

For the answer to that question you have to look to evolution.

The number one priority for all of us at a base level is survival. It’s not reproducing, it’s not spiritual growth and it’s not being a movie star, its just survival.

With that in mind I’d like to congratulate you on making it this far. Evolutionary speaking you are a great success, so go on, give yourself a pat on the back because you’re not dead. Seriously that is a success. There are enough ways to die on this earth and you have avoided every single one of them. Therefore, your body knows that it did a great job in getting you here and it has awarded itself an A+ in it’s major of getting to the end of the day still drawing breath.

Guess what it’s now thinking?

“Well I got us this far so what I’m doing must be working, let’s do the same thing again tomorrow.”

So then when you try and buck the trend and do something different it’s a big evolutionary no-no! “Why change?” it whines, “We’re still breathing aren’t we? Let’s stick with the mullet haircut, I like it” Consequently you start to feel uneasy (maybe not about losing the mullet) and feel the urge to resist leaving that comfort zone that has been so lovely and cuddly to date.

So as I was saying your body’s number one job is to keep you alive in anyway it can. That’s why when somebody says to you “Lets drink 10 beers and go bungee jumping off the local bridge with this piece of rope I found” it starts to act weird. Unless you’re as insane as your rope-swinging friend, you’re probably going to decline his generous testosterone induced offer. On the other hand, if you do accept because you don’t want to look like a wuss, you will kick into effect a whole series of events designed to make you change your mind pronto. Ever had those sweaty palms, dry throat, jelly legs and strong desire to visit the bathroom even though you went 20 minutes ago? Of course you have, everybody has, that’s the body’s way of saying “Actually I think I’ll stay at home, you go on without me, but be sure to let me know how it went” It’s the fight or flight response so loved by us all that we even manage to recreate it under benign conditions, but that’s for another blog on another day.

What happens though if you accept the jump of certain death and you actually survive? Firstly, you will probably feel great because you just cheated death. This may or may not be followed up by a swift heart attack as your body strikes back, but let’s presume it doesn’t. At this stage you have probably got enough adrenaline coursing through your blood stream to supply a large hospital with epinephrine for a month and another jump may seem like a no-brainer.

Let’s presume you do another few jumps unscathed and go home feeling like you’re King (or Queen) of the world, then what?

This is the really cool bit. Now you have taught your body a lesson that it wont forget, you have taught it that it’s safe to bungee jump with lunatic friends after drinking beer. So next time you get asked to do the same thing your apprehension levels will be much lower and be a lot more manageable. In fact you may only need 5 beers and a double vodka.

What’s happened is that you have stretched your comfort zone and bungee jumping is no longer outside its boundary (I’m sure there is some pun/joke in there somewhere but I can’t be bothered to look for it). It gets even better than that though, because the good news is that it stays that way and rarely returns to where it started. There can be exceptions of course. If you pick up the local paper the following day to see a picture of your friend impaled on a pointy rock in the river with a piece of frayed rope attached to his midriff then it’s doubtful you’ll be too keen to try again anytime soon.

On the whole though, stretching your comfort zone is a good thing because it can remove a lot of the restrictions that many people feel on a day-to-day basis. It’s no fun being fearful of asking for a deserved raise, speaking in public or applying for a new job, but if you push through nevertheless, the next time it will be easier and the time after that easier still. It may never become something you look forward to, but that’s not the point as long as it doesn’t hold you back.

I want to stress at this point that I do realize that this is easier said than done for many people. If somebody came to me for Life Coaching and help with removing fears I don’t think they’d be too impressed if I said “Just go and do it and stop whining!” and then asked for $125. There are a number of ways to facilitate change using NLP and/or hypnotherapy but that alas is for another day.

In the meantime, just go and do it and stop whining because your true potential is that thing juuuuust outside your comfort zone and it’s waiting for you whenever you’re ready.

[Calisto]

Tim Brownson,

Well I read all of it! Do I get a reward? I have been through some tough times and I am a work in progress. I've always said nothing stays the same - not even the bad times. Just knowing that change is happening all the time, even when we are unaware of it, gives me the strength to get up and face another day, a new day, full of changes.

[Mark Lapierre]

Tim! Great post! I love the way you've weaved homeostasis and neuroendocrine functions into personal development without even hinting at those complex words which no-one knows (well, apart from epinephrine )