Tackling the Elements of Personal Change
Life may be moving along smoothly for you and the sky is clear then out of the clear blue the thunder head appears over your head, the thunder rolls and the lighting flashes as torrents fall heavily on you and you respond in kind with an unnatural fury. “Oh, no, I have no idea where that response came from,” you mutter as you bury your head in your hands in embarrassment. But in that moment, you can make a decision to change and that is personalizing a decision for change. Change is scary and often we resist it even though we know the change will bring us benefits in the end.
One day my boyfriend and I were discussing something, and he simply made an observation which prompted me to snap back with a fiery retort. He looked shocked because that was out of context for me. It only took me a moment to know what prompted my response.
I looked at him and said, “I’m sorry, but that response was generated by my history!” I made a personal decision that afternoon to retrain my understanding and response mechanism. This is not an excuse to react or respond badly or hurtfully but I find that if I understand what prompted me to say what I did then I have positioned myself to better adjust my behavior and craft my responses.
If someone close to you, a peer at work or a stranger lashes out to you when you spout off a “history-driven” response saying that you need to get help, you may go get help to change but it will not be your decision. Rather it will be a decision motivated by guilt. This strips you of your power over the process.
If you are the type of person that demands perfection in whatever you attempt, then it may be a good idea to make a conscious decision to give yourself grace as you set out to break the ties that bind you. The process can be messy and it may be stretched over an indefinite period of time.
Timing
Another reason why your decision to set out on this journey, and it is a journey, must be your personal decision is because of the timing. Your decision to commence this journey may not be a line in the sand or a circled date on the calendar. It is an attitude of openness to becoming better and grow into your full potential.
Recently I drove away from having made a very difficult decision and called a friend to get feedback to assure me I’d made the “right” decision. In the course of conversation, she pointed out that I kept referring to the fact I wanted to make sure I’d done “the right thing”. The moment she said this, I remembered something which a counselor who I had for a short time when I was younger, suggested to me. His suggestion was that I might consider looking at my decisions in the premise other than “right or wrong”.
Please do not stop reading here because I am not denying “right and wrong”. I’m merely saying sometimes there are different reasons to make a decision that benefit you best. Referring to my personal experience above, I made the decision because I felt it was best for me, but I struggled because that put me in a strange unfamiliar place. I desperately wanted to attach a “right or wrong” tag to it then I would still be in my comfort zone.
Value of a Strong Support System
Because I was not comfortable with making a decision other than with a “right or wrong” premise, I needed to call a friend to reassure me. When she pointed out to me the fallacy of every decision having a right or wrong premise, I remembered.
Right here, I want to reiterate the importance of having a strong support system. This will give you the best outcome for your life in general and for particular times like this when you need to bounce an action or decision off of someone reliable. Their purpose is to trigger us to remember, to think or to analyze, not to make decisions for us.
If you want to personalize your decision to break the ties that bind you to your history; to destructive behavior or to non-social actions, it is vitally important to “take on” your decision. Own your growth journey because you are taking control of your destination.
More Than Checking the Box
After you claim your decision to adjust your life patterns, reactions and your thought trajectories you must accept the fact that you may overcorrect as you head to the middle of the road and attempt to moderate “negative automatic responses”. This journey to break the ties that bind you is more than checking a box that you did what you should have.
I’ve been involved with education most of my adult life but the last couple years I have been a long-term sub at our local high school. Last year, I was placed in a Functional SPED room. The room was ill-managed, understaffed and with an under-certified staff acting as teacher. As I listened to the supervisors and managers for the program talk, they just checked a box then walked away from it. They did not follow through to make sure the “checked box” was implemented so that the students would benefit.
The result was that nothing got better. Problems were not resolved or even tackled. They checked the box that said they were addressing the issues then walked away. Checking the box without follow-up and attention to what needs changing will yield no positive outcomes.
Today, while reading this content, make a list of things you want to reformat, adjust or make better and put a box beside it. Next check the box. Those are the first two steps and important ones I might add. Now the real work begins, but never uncheck that box.
Flex Those New Muscles
Now you are deciding to develop new muscles to respond with repose and firmness rather that blowing up in frustration and anger because that is the behavior that was modeled for you as a child and a young person. That is a tie that binds you and it is one that needs to be broken if you want to adjust your life trajectory.
Let life happen in its own timing because you cannot force change, but you can be ready when the opportunity arrives. When you start feeling the dam level rising, take a deep breath and remember what you want to change, what you want to adjust that will make you into an even stronger individual.
It is important to learn to recognize when it is go-time to start carving out a different reaction, a new decision-making process and an attitude that yields better returns. As we live our everyday life those moments will come when a reaction is required or a new decision-making muscle has to be brought out of hiding and put on the exerciser machine to develop it.
Your course of change and development is up to you. How do you want to respond differently than you do now? What is the energy that you want to project to family and friends? You do not have to be who they think you should be. It is on your shoulders to determine your forward trajectory. Be ready to make good on your decision to optimize change and growth in your life so the ties that bind you can be broken for good.