I Still Don't Know What I Was Looking For and My Time Was Running Wild. A Million Dead End Streets. Every Time I Thought I Got It Made, It Seemed the Taste Was Not So Sweet - from Changes by David Bowie
Most of us have things in our lives right now that we wish were different. We wish they weren’t there. They aren’t quite right. They are annoyances. Things we put up with. We know we should do something about them, but we keep putting it off. We know that there would be a benefit in dealing with them, but we have decided to live with them. There are too many other things going on, and it isn’t a priority right now. We tell ourselves that we will get to them eventually.
There are things we would like to do. Dreams we would like to pursue. But now is not the time. You have other things you have to take care of first. There are things you would like to change in your life but you think, what is the point? It is too late. I am not capable of achieving it. No one will believe in me or support me anyway. This is as good as it gets.
Think of the warning light on the dashboard of your car. It has just lit up. It is just something
else you have to worry about on top of everything else. But hey, the car is running fine. You see no apparent issues. It can’t be that serious, right? You need your car, and you don’t have time to take it to get serviced right now. So you put it off for now, saying to yourself that you will get to it eventually. Maybe it will go away. Turn off on its own.
Let’s make it a little more personal. You enjoy your job. Things are going well in your career. You have worked hard and you are proud of your reputation. You have received recognition and feel appreciated at work. You come home and the feeling is much different. There are all the pressing problems waiting for you as you come in the door. No one asks about your day.
Or you have just been for a checkup, and our doctor tells you your cholesterol is high, and it would do you good to lose twenty pounds. You feel okay. You trust your doctor, but you are not feeling a sense of urgency. Still, you may start the new year out right. You are watching what you eat. Cutting out the alcohol. You purchase some exercise equipment. Join a fitness club. You start out on the right track, but as weeks pass you find life is too busy. You aren’t feeling the benefits of these changes in the first few weeks, and you need that drink after work to help you relax once you are home, so you never really establish a different routine. Now is not the right time. You don't have time to workout anyway
You notice the marks on your son’s report card are slipping. He has always been a good
student. He has never been in trouble. You know he doesn’t like some of his teachers, so you blame his performance on that. You believe his marks will bounce back up again next term, when the classes change.
Things between you and your spouse have changed. Communication is different. There is no real arguing going on, but it seems that there is no feeling in the way you deal with each other. Everything is transactional. Pay the bills. Do the chores. Go to work. Take the kids to their activities. Things are routine. Life is like a merry-go-round. Life is lacking something. You know that there must be more but can’t visualize it. You suppress the feeling, but it gnaws at you. It is actually a breath of fresh air when you step out the door on your own to catch the bus to work. You are feeling free.
Back at home. You come in the door and you wonder if you matter. No one wants to hear about your day. Quite frankly, you have had a bad day, and don’t really want to talk about it. You feel unappreciated and that no one understands you. After dinner, you have to cut your lawn, but your neighbour borrowed your lawnmower last week and hasn’t returned it. He never returns anything he borrows. You keep having to chase after him. Your brother calls you up that night, not to ask how you are doing, but to question the way you are handling things in your life and shaming you for what he feels you are not doing.
You put up with these things. This is your life after all. As imperfect as it is, but whose is perfect, right? But imagine these things as they are left unaddressed. What you resist, persists. They go from being not quite right to stressful
Your engine light is still burning bright, and now there is a noise coming from underneath the hood of your car. The car is still running, but this doesn’t sound good. You really feel like you have to get this looked at but you are concerned about the cost. And when are you going to find the time? You need your car.
You may be happy in your career, but at home there is not the same fulfillment. So you start
staying a little later at work. Throw more time and energy into your career, so there is even less attention to what is going on at home. Communication between you and your spouse gets tense. You may see your kids less and less during the week because they are living their own lives. Upstairs doing their homework when you come home, or out with their friends. Life gets more out of balance.
You ignore the warnings of your doctor, and let your diet slide, as well as your workouts. Over the next several months, not only do you gain weight, but you are feeling a tightness in your chest, and shortness of breath. You are starting to feel scared. What is happening?
On your son’s next report card, his marks continue to drop. Not only that, but he has also been late for school six times, has been absent without leave twice, and was sent to the principal’s office for getting into a fight with another student.
Communication between you and your spouse is getting worse. You can’t seem to agree on anything. Priorities and finances, among other things. You are trying to be understanding, but you feel you are being controlled and not appreciated. You are being held back. You see other family members and friends not having the same issues. They seem to be more active outside the family without there being any issues. Their partners are supportive. The dissatisfaction you are feeling... The feeling that there is something more out there may not depress you. It may inspire you to search. But the people around you don’t get it. Your spouse. Your co-workers. Your friends. They wonder what has gotten into you. So you grow apart from key relationships in your life. This causes problems with your partner. You both are not on the same page, and it causes conflict
You don’t feel appreciated, so you get frustrated and maybe a little depressed. You have no one to turn to that understands you. Everywhere there are problems. At work. At home. With your family. With neighbours. Where do you go? What do you do? You start to believe what people are saying about you. That you are incompetent. Not worthy. You aren’t capable. You don’t know what you are doing, and you will never succeed.
Now imagine how these things that were once just minor issues....
....that you let go and left unattended, persisted and escalated. They became stressful in your life and beyond that to the point where they are now broken and causing critical and crippling problems.
Your car, left without maintenance, finally breaks down. In doing so, there may be the danger of someone getting hurt through an accident or a mechanical failure. Leaving you without a car, a major expense to repair or even replace the vehicle, and hopefully without anyone getting injured. But having everyone put out by the inconvenience and expense.
The imbalance between work and family is causing not only tension, but communication and relationship breakdown. Arguments with the spouse or partner about priorities and problems that result. Each person confesses the other’s sins. Poor relations with children. Losing influence with the kids in the family. Everyone seeks enjoyment outside the family. Home just being a place where everyone resides at the end of the day
Because you have not heeded the warnings of your doctor and your body, you are facing
a real health crisis in your life. You feel like you are not in control. You have made no real change in your lifestyle and things have gotten to a point where your health needs critical attention, and your life may be in the balance.
As for your son, you are called to a meeting with his teacher to discuss the continued deterioration of his marks and behavior. The school authorities also wanted to bring to your attention that drugs had been found in his locker, and something needed to be done as he was a threat to other students.
You are growing. But those around you aren’t. And worse, they don’t understand or support your growth. This causes strain and stress to the point where there are some life-changing decisions that need to be made. You can’t go on like this.
Or feeling unappreciated and misunderstood, you withdraw. You believe what others are saying about you. You sink into depression. Perhaps cushioning the blows through alcohol, drugs, or some other addiction, which in themselves have devastating effects. You find yourself in a dark hole that seems impossible to get out of
There are issues we face every day. Whether it be issues regarding maintenance, repair or upgrade of things around our homes and lives. Relationship issues with our family, our partners, our children and our friends. Our health and lifestyle. Our priorities when it comes to achieving balance in our personal, professional, and family life. We seek fulfillment in our lives but feel so unfulfilled.
These scenarios all emphasize a point. That seemingly minor, inconsequential, yet important things left unaddressed or unattended, can mushroom into critical life-altering issues that cause problems for all involved. These are deep problems. Painful problems. There is no quick fix to these problems, especially after they have escalated to being critical issues. Even at the beginning, when issues are relatively small, and almost unnoticeable, change is difficult.
We all have had similar experiences in our lives. Those things that we know we should attend to or think about, but don’t. And those things that are causing stress or problems in our lives, and we feel the pressure to do something but we are stuck, or torn, or really don’t know what to do. And then we have those crises and critical moments that occur that need immediate attention or action, simply because they were not dealt with earlier.
Dealing with change effectively is such a key component of moving along our paths. Being
unable to deal with issues that we encounter or not giving them the necessary attention will eventually result in us getting stuck, off course, or even falling back. At the very best, not dealing with change will have us moving forward precariously, being unaware of what might be waiting for us, and leaving us unprepared.
So how do we deal with the infinite number of things we can encounter that keep us from moving forward? There is no “one size fits all” approach to handling change. That should not be a surprise. There is no quick fix, but there is a path. Maybe more appropriately in this case, there is an approach. There is an approach to navigating your path. An approach that will get you on the path to progress. And the first step is recognizing and realizing your role in why things are the way they are. How they got to be this way, and how this happened. Where were you in the course of these events, and what did you do, or not do to shape these things. You have to own it. Then you have to accept that it is your responsibility to move yourself forward. To get back on track. Get unstuck. Change your course.
You are not responsible for the poor programming you received as a child, but as an adult you are one hundred percent responsible for fixing it.
If we are a work of art, we are the creators. The brush is in our hands. It is true that up to a certain point, we are largely the product of the nurturing of our parents. How we were raised and events that happened during our childhood. Throw in the effects of genetics and culture, and the foundation for our lives is set pretty early in life without much say from us. But there comes that time when the brush is handed over to you. When you start having a say in decisions that are made about your life. When you take responsibility for your life and where it is going. As I have stated, this transition happens at different times for us all. Some sooner, and others later. The hand off is not done very effectively in some cases. But ultimately it becomes your responsibility.
Even for those things that have happened, or are the way they are in your life, that were influenced by your upbringing or events that happened when you were a child, as an adult you acknowledge that, but you also need to own the fact that you are not determined by those things. If you believe that you are determined and limited by these things, your ability to change will be limited.
In order to initiate change in our lives, we need to change. That starts with our approach to change.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we first created them. - Albert Einstein
Einstein also said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. That doesn’t make change any easier. But it is a starting point.
Many would rather point their fingers. Blame others for their situation. Say it is not their fault. Blame their upbringing. Blame the conditions, and say things are unfair. That approach is not going to help. That is going to keep you stuck.
I refer back to the exercise I included in my blog, “The Artistry of The Crooked Path”. This
was not just an exercise in recall. It was an exercise in self-awareness. Along with thinking of the events, people, and experiences, I asked you how these things made you feel. I asked how they shaped you. If you take this exercise seriously, it would not only bring back a lot of memories, it would also stir up a lot of feelings. It would get you thinking and making connections between the people, events, and feelings, perhaps even leading you up to where you are today. One of the benefits of an exercise like this is not just bringing up old memories like they were yesterday. Memories that were long since buried. Locked away, but not forgotten. One of the main benefits is experiencing clarity. Hindsight being 20/20 vision. Life can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards.
Self-awareness is the ability to think about our very own thought process. It allows us to evaluate and learn from our own experiences. Things that were not clear or did not make sense at the time, all of a sudden fall into place in hindsight. Especially when we see our own role in what took place. How it affected us. How we reacted, and how it changed us. How it affected the path we were on and how that led us to where we are today.
Self-awareness allows us to stand apart and examine everything, and especially how we see ourselves. It allows us to examine our thoughts, our actions, our feelings, and even our history. Self-awareness helps us initiate change by examining these things and seeing, accepting, and owning our role in why things are the way they are. We can evaluate our actions, our interactions, our motives, and the results we got. We can see how one thing led to another. We can think about what we could have done differently that may have changed things. And if we can think about these things in the past, then we can think of a way forward.
I Don't Want To Spend My Life Jaded, Waiting to Wake Up One Day and Find, That I Let All These Years Go By Wasted
I have faced similar struggles at different times throughout my life. Ignoring the red flags. I have been called a procrastinator at times. An avoider. There is a fine line between the two. I would keep driving the car while the gas gauge is resting on E, thinking I can drive an extra 50 miles to the next gas station. I experienced an imbalance between work and home. Partially because of the demands of work, and partially because of conflicts in my personal life. Did one cause the other? I would say No. But the imbalance was a symptom of not being able to navigate the change properly. I know that I was feeling more fulfilled at work at times. At home, we avoided the hard discussions at times often because of the feeling they would lead to arguments.
For most of my life, I was conscious of my fitness and would find time to exercise regularly. That in itself would cause issues with work/life balance. But there came a time in my life where I let the fitness slide. I got out of my routine. I gained weight and now have an ongoing affliction that I am dealing with, that may or may not have been related to foregoing my previous fitness routine. It is a lot harder getting back into shape and dealing with health issues than keeping up a healthy fitness routine when you were able.
I have felt the dissonance of having a calling, the need to contribute, be involved and give back, and having that met with resistance by important people in my life, and not feel supported.
I have felt unappreciated, not seen, heard or valued. I have also been labelled many times in my life. Labels that held me back and made me feel bad about myself. I know how all of that feels.
I know what it feels to be stuck, unhappy, confused, frustrated, and stressed as a result of
life, and what we feel has been dealt to us. I have also made decisions, or not made decisions, as a result of all these negative feelings, that did not help my life for the better. Some made it worse. Some left things the way they were. Because in my actions, or inactions, I was not doing the right things. Not because I was indifferent, or didn't care, but mainly because I did not know what to do. I didn’t know where to turn. I would say to myself that this is as good as it gets. I have to suck it up. Maybe you have said the same thing to yourself. The thing is though, I knew that was not true. Deep down, I knew there was more and I was capable of more. But periods of chaos in my life, and not knowing myself, as well as the lack of the right support and influence, kept that feeling buried.
But there were significant moments in my life that shifted the way I looked at things. That shifted the way I looked at myself and my situation. These provided moments of clarity where I was compelled to act. I was motivated to act, and it was important that I act, as that was a window of opportunity. The pathway, for the moment, was clear. The path that I was following, and the path forward. It was important to act because if I did not, that window would close, and the motivation and clarity would be lost, and who knows if and when it would come back or if there will be a similar opportunity coming along.
"For One Split Second, She Almost Turned Around, But That Would Be Like Pouring Rain Drops Back Into a Cloud. So She Took Another Step and Said, "I See a Way Out, and I'm Gonna Take It"
I believe similar moments happen in all of our lives. There are significant points in our lives that provide the catalyst to change. How this happens, and when and where is anyone’s guess. But I do know that in order to have positive change in our lives there are things that have to be present at the start. First of all, you have to want to change. There has to be a gap. A need that is biting at you. Annoying you. Causing distress or dissonance in your life. Maybe it is the last straw. Hopefully you have not hit rock bottom, but that is where some people have to be to consider change. They have no other choice.
You have to be motivated to change or take part in the change. Then you have to take a step. You see as long as you take that step, you are keeping that window open. And then you take another. Then another, and not only is the window open, but you have found you have crawled through that window and are breaking new ground. You are not where you were before. But what is that first step?
I suggest to you that once you have decided to take that step, the first step is one of self-awareness. Examining how you got to this point. The point to where feel you need to have change in your life. Examine the events that took place and the people involved. How did you get here? You may have to go way back and follow the trail of events to where you are right now. Most importantly you need to examine your thinking, your motives, your actions, your habits and your way of looking at things. What was your role in getting you to where you are where change is necessary? What is your history? And what is calling you forward? You must look at yourself objectively. What role have you played in why things are the way they are?
Examining where we have been will give us some idea of where we want to go, moving
forward. And it will put us in a position to take the next step. And this all comes through self-awareness.
Self-awareness requires deep personal honesty. It comes from asking ourselves the hard questions. Do I accept my role in why things are the way they are? Do I really want this change in my life? Am I willing to pay the price? What will I need to help move myself forward? Do I accept responsibility for my own growth and development?
Self-awareness allows us to start where we are with no excuses. It causes us to recognize our weaknesses, and how we have to learn, grow, push our limits, and change the way we see things, including how we see ourselves. It will help us see the path we were on, achieve clarity, and show us a path forward. It provides us with those A-Ha moments. Where things for the moment make sense. You may not know exactly what to do next, but you have a sense of direction. You see a path, and you are going to take it.
And I will see you out there on that path... The Crooked Path
AfterNotes -
Wasted - by Carrie Underwood
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