Let’s be honest, we’ve all got something. Something we want to change, shift, make different in our lives. By this time in a regular year, we would be finding out if New Year resolutions are sticking and if we can make the changes we were hoping to. But this is no normal year. We are coming off the end of a year that was unlike any we have experienced before. A year with extra stress, challenges and maybe even some opportunities.
But even without COVID, we are still working on the things in our lives we want to change. Maybe it’s your health, or a job.
Maybe it’s a relationship with your partner, child, parent. Maybe it’s just trying to add something to your life to help you feel less blah every morning when you wake up.
Do these changes seem to always be just out of reach? Why is that? Why is it so hard to do the things we say we want to do? The things we know would be helpful, fun, healthy?
Change comes down to two decisions. Two incredibly obvious decisions that most people overlook and don’t think about.
Let’s look at these two critically important decisions so that you can really start making the changes you deserve in your life.
Decision 1: You have to decide you really WANT to change.
When I was completing my master’s program in library science, one of the first classes we took was on information literacy. Information literacy is the ability to find, evaluate, and apply information to your life. This can range from knowing how to locate a doctor to writing a research paper. I was so surprised that the first step to being information-literate is the acknowledgment that you actually need information and making the decision to go find it. I mean, that seems so obvious, right?
But as I considered this step, I slowly began to realize why it was included. It is amazing how many people don’t realize that they are missing information. They have a problem, but they won’t connect that there may be a solution to that problem if they would just look for it.
The answer could be right there, but they never decided to look. They didn’t believe the solution was possible. Or that the solution was something they could do. Or even that there was a problem at all. The solution was either not real, too hard, or not necessary. So, they just sat with their issue wondering and complaining about how they didn’t like whatever it was they weren’t deciding to make better.
The same is true for anything in our lives. No matter what the circumstance is that we are working with, the first step is always deciding what we really want to do, that we can do it, and that it’s worth it to make a shift.
We all say we want things to change, until we remember that change can be uncomfortable. We are normally operating on autopilot, but a decision is imperative for anything that requires us to shift—especially when we don’t know how to shift. If we want anything to be different it can only be done through deliberate intention.
Change requires something from you. It demands honesty, vulnerability, and sincerity. In fact, depending on the depth of change that needs to happen, it can actually be a little painful. Or a lot painful.
Purposely deciding to do something that we know is going to be uncomfortable is difficult. People tend to work very hard to avoid anything uncomfortable in life. Modern society allows us to easily hide from discomfort, and yet, it’s the discomfort that helps us grow, evolve, and experience all that we want. This first critical decision is mandatory because it requires a recognition that you need to change or grow. It means you are being honest that you aren’t okay right now as things are. You might not know what needs to happen, but you know you can no longer live as you are right now. Once you get here, you can move forward.
Decision 2: Choose Your Meaning
The second critical decision is in deciding your meaning. We almost always forget that we actually have control over this. We forget that we are choosing meaning all the time…for everything. Our brains are meaning-making machines. It’s what we do. And thank God, because without meaning there is no purpose. And without purpose, there is nothing to live for. Our brains create meaning so effortlessly we just don’t remember that all of those meanings are individual choices.
When something happens in your life, you are the one that decides what it means. You provide yourself the why. It’s not preordained as fact. It’s a belief you have about what happened. What’s the reason for x, y, z in your life? You decide that; it’s a choice.
You get to determine why thing happen. And the reason you get to make that choice is because there isn’t just one ‘why’ for anything. Truth is a personal interpretation of life, and there are limitless interpretations. How does this play out in real life?
At age three, my son was diagnosed with autism. I remember crying through the follow-up of his evaluation. I remember going through the process of denial, proclaiming that he didn’t “act” like someone with autism, naively thinking that I knew enough about it to discredit reality. I spent months not being able to do anything about it. Looking back, I was grieving the loss of a child I never had. And I spent my time asking myself why. Why was this happening? Why was it happening to my son? Why to me?
First, I needed to decide to shift this pain. And I did. I decided that I couldn’t feel this way anymore. I was doing nothing to help myself or my son. I was in so much pain I couldn’t even read about autism without becoming overwhelmed and crying. I was no good to anyone and if I continued, I would have sunk and taken my son with me. I decided that I couldn’t let these feelings control me anymore.
The next step was to find something positive in my son’s diagnosis so I could show up for him. A reason so compelling that I wouldn’t get sucked into feeling victimized again. I needed to choose a meaning and purpose for the autism. And I did. I decided that this experience could be about me learning to see things with more empathy and compassion, not just for my son, but for everyone. I was able to see that I was learning the power of personal perception through my son’s experience. I was understanding, on an immense new level, what it meant to say that someone sees the world differently than me. Instead of getting stuck in grief as a victim, I was able to choose a meaning that propelled me into opening new doors that otherwise may have stayed shut.
This second decision is important to the process of change and growth because, like the first choice, without it, we won’t do anything. We might decide that the reason something happened is because of someone else and so we don’t have anything to do. We might decide that the reason something happened is because we are unlucky, and that’s just the way life is so we don’t bother trying to change it.
Or maybe we decide we are being punished and so we deserve whatever we are dealing with so we can’t change it.
The reason you choose means everything about how you will act, think, and feel about whatever it is you are living. Being able to see my son’s autism as a teaching experience and deciding for it to help me be more empathic has had an enormous impact on how I show up in the world—instead of deciding that life is just unfair and there isn’t anything I can do about it. I am one person with one meaning, and a completely different person with the other.
I needed to make both choices to create what was going to work for me and my family. These decisions are the difference between coasting through life on autopilot and living life to the fullest. If you take the time to remember that, you can always make a new choice about what something means and then choose to do something different so you can grow.
These two decisions are the ones that take our life from fine and okay to rewarding and meaningful. You can’t really make anything happen for yourself without first deciding that you want to and then deciding why you are doing it.
Do that today—find the one thing that keeps showing up for you and start making some new decisions about it. Maybe there is something you can change to make it better, maybe the reason to grow is something you haven’t taken the time to think about yet.
Give yourself that time.
