Every year it gets more difficult to change
This is more technically known as "cognitive inertia" as most of the time we find ourselves searching for and seeing confirmation for what we hold as true or accurate - confirmation bias they call it. But change is more important than ever as we age, and in fact is one of the few undeniable things that we can't avoid if we want to continue to have a life.
Yet increasing years and the culmination of experience and our histories, combined with a nostalgia for the well-polished past, selective memory about ourselves and our actions, decreasing mental agility, overflooded minds, under-active imaginations, little play, ever more limited energy, and obsessions with health issues, among a hundred other concerns and foci, make change take on an oversized pressure and challenge. It "feels" more difficult, and that becomes a self-fulfilling experience for most as the years pile on and on.
All of this came to mind today as I met a "husky" young man this morning as I was starting my daily bike ride of 11 miles straight up the mountain. I immediately felt terrible for this young fellow. Husky was the polite word used for overweight boys in the 60's and 70's. I bought jeans out of the Sears and Roebuck catalogue in the "husky" section. I continued purchasing clothes in husky sections and the big man sections, and then XXL sections of stores until I was 50 years old. And honestly I may do so once again in the future. But miraculously (for me), I changed.
I changed my belief that it was in my genetic makeup to be overweight. I changed my belief (i.e. excuse) that I had no control over my weight. I changed what I thought was an appropriate amount of food to eat each day. I changed my acceptance that I did not have the personal resources or self control to take charge of my life. And as I said, it would be ever so easy to allow my discipline to fail, and for me to return to my husky state of existence, but at least for the last six years, I have been weight-appropriate for the very first time in my life. But if I do return to that undisciplined state I lived in for 50 years, it won't be because I no longer believe that I can't change. It will probably be because I am a lazy butthead, or some other nonsense as that, but I HAVE done it for SIX years. I did and have changed.
Some other things I am thinking through about changing are like: work, alcohol, church, what kind of son I am to my dad, purpose, significance, meaning, impact, technology, communication, power, money, retirement, and my wake in life ... I am at various stages of reassessing these matters - all of them.
I am intentionally and consciously changing and reassigning these matters importance in my life, and what I will choose to do about them. This kind of thinking is "thinking about thinking" kinds of reassessment. The very foundation of change. I have been meeting entirely too many people my age who are walking through their one and only life sleepwalking, or at the very least just waiting for it to end. So perhaps this blog will not resonate with you at all, but perhaps it will shake you up enough to realize that you are largely the sum total of your choices and beliefs and that you can chose where you stand on each one of them and do it differently. They call it change, and it will never be easier than today.
This is more technically known as "cognitive inertia" as most of the time we find ourselves searching for and seeing confirmation for what we hold as true or accurate - confirmation bias they call it. But change is more important than ever as we age, and in fact is one of the few undeniable things that we can't avoid if we want to continue to have a life.
Yet increasing years and the culmination of experience and our histories, combined with a nostalgia for the well-polished past, selective memory about ourselves and our actions, decreasing mental agility, overflooded minds, under-active imaginations, little play, ever more limited energy, and obsessions with health issues, among a hundred other concerns and foci, make change take on an oversized pressure and challenge. It "feels" more difficult, and that becomes a self-fulfilling experience for most as the years pile on and on.
All of this came to mind today as I met a "husky" young man this morning as I was starting my daily bike ride of 11 miles straight up the mountain. I immediately felt terrible for this young fellow. Husky was the polite word used for overweight boys in the 60's and 70's. I bought jeans out of the Sears and Roebuck catalogue in the "husky" section. I continued purchasing clothes in husky sections and the big man sections, and then XXL sections of stores until I was 50 years old. And honestly I may do so once again in the future. But miraculously (for me), I changed.
I changed my belief that it was in my genetic makeup to be overweight. I changed my belief (i.e. excuse) that I had no control over my weight. I changed what I thought was an appropriate amount of food to eat each day. I changed my acceptance that I did not have the personal resources or self control to take charge of my life. And as I said, it would be ever so easy to allow my discipline to fail, and for me to return to my husky state of existence, but at least for the last six years, I have been weight-appropriate for the very first time in my life. But if I do return to that undisciplined state I lived in for 50 years, it won't be because I no longer believe that I can't change. It will probably be because I am a lazy butthead, or some other nonsense as that, but I HAVE done it for SIX years. I did and have changed.
Some other things I am thinking through about changing are like: work, alcohol, church, what kind of son I am to my dad, purpose, significance, meaning, impact, technology, communication, power, money, retirement, and my wake in life ... I am at various stages of reassessing these matters - all of them.
I am intentionally and consciously changing and reassigning these matters importance in my life, and what I will choose to do about them. This kind of thinking is "thinking about thinking" kinds of reassessment. The very foundation of change. I have been meeting entirely too many people my age who are walking through their one and only life sleepwalking, or at the very least just waiting for it to end. So perhaps this blog will not resonate with you at all, but perhaps it will shake you up enough to realize that you are largely the sum total of your choices and beliefs and that you can chose where you stand on each one of them and do it differently. They call it change, and it will never be easier than today.
