Old to New
How do you change? How do you walk those steps between the person you were and the person you think you want to become?
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, or so the Chinese say. But there's a proverb born every minute. Does that really explain to me how to get from the television to the gym? Does it put my feet on the road to go running? Does it close the refrigerator door when I find myself standing in front of it and I know I'm not hungry, at least not for food, especially not for that leftover quarter of strawberry rhubarb pie I'm hovering over even though I ate dinner only about a half an hour ago and what I really need to do is get ready for bed.
There should exist some tricks here. Maybe if I get that set of Tony Robbins tapes. But then I'd have to see his face and body on the boxed set or the covers of the innumerable books he's churned out, and to me something about him seems too big. Too much face and jaw. Too much body. Too much traveling in helicopters and demonstrating how to break boards with his bare hands, wearing too many impeccable suits. God love him, he's made a success. But I don't want to be anything resembling Tony Robbins.
Of course, there are other plans out there. You can't swing a dead remote control without seeing someone's new plan for the new you that will give you a new life, job, home, relationship, or head of hair. My head of hair is fine, though what's inside the cranium I sometime have doubts about.
But when does change happen? Do you become new at the moment you decide to behave differently? Or is it when you actually do behave differently, even if you don't feel it in your heart yet? Or does it take place when something inside you clicks? Do you wake up one day, after weeks or months or years of following through on those new habits, of eating or exercising or talking or walking or praying differently, and recognize the distance you've traveled from what you once were and know then, "Ah, now I've changed"?
For several years, I attended Al Anon, the 12-step group for friends and family of alcoholics, and Adult Children of Alcoholics, another group. Hours spent in little rooms with folding chairs and folding tables and carpeting selected sometime in the 1950s or 1970s (those stand out in my mind as big decades for carpets). I saw people come to meetings week after week and month after month, telling the same story. Struggling with the same behavior and feelings. Making the same mistakes. It comforted me, because I was doing the same thing.
I know that for me (and I suspect for many of the others), that hour and a half in the meeting was the sanest part of my week. The fact that I was doing the same stupid things felt different when I talked about them to people whose basic response was simply, "Yeah, I've been there. Sometimes I'm still there. Just keep coming back." It's as though we were being the same but we were practicing being different, an hour and a half at a time. Rehearsing it out loud, trying to build up in my head--from the collective voices of the other people in the meetings--this new entity inside me. A voice to tell me, when I was on the verge of making the same mistake, "You know that's not a good idea. You don't need to do that. Let's do something else instead."
Maybe that's all a new habit is, a voice that tells you "This is what we do now, at this moment. Remember, this is what we do." I'm listening. I'm listening hard for that voice.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, or so the Chinese say. But there's a proverb born every minute. Does that really explain to me how to get from the television to the gym? Does it put my feet on the road to go running? Does it close the refrigerator door when I find myself standing in front of it and I know I'm not hungry, at least not for food, especially not for that leftover quarter of strawberry rhubarb pie I'm hovering over even though I ate dinner only about a half an hour ago and what I really need to do is get ready for bed.
There should exist some tricks here. Maybe if I get that set of Tony Robbins tapes. But then I'd have to see his face and body on the boxed set or the covers of the innumerable books he's churned out, and to me something about him seems too big. Too much face and jaw. Too much body. Too much traveling in helicopters and demonstrating how to break boards with his bare hands, wearing too many impeccable suits. God love him, he's made a success. But I don't want to be anything resembling Tony Robbins.
Of course, there are other plans out there. You can't swing a dead remote control without seeing someone's new plan for the new you that will give you a new life, job, home, relationship, or head of hair. My head of hair is fine, though what's inside the cranium I sometime have doubts about.
But when does change happen? Do you become new at the moment you decide to behave differently? Or is it when you actually do behave differently, even if you don't feel it in your heart yet? Or does it take place when something inside you clicks? Do you wake up one day, after weeks or months or years of following through on those new habits, of eating or exercising or talking or walking or praying differently, and recognize the distance you've traveled from what you once were and know then, "Ah, now I've changed"?
For several years, I attended Al Anon, the 12-step group for friends and family of alcoholics, and Adult Children of Alcoholics, another group. Hours spent in little rooms with folding chairs and folding tables and carpeting selected sometime in the 1950s or 1970s (those stand out in my mind as big decades for carpets). I saw people come to meetings week after week and month after month, telling the same story. Struggling with the same behavior and feelings. Making the same mistakes. It comforted me, because I was doing the same thing.
I know that for me (and I suspect for many of the others), that hour and a half in the meeting was the sanest part of my week. The fact that I was doing the same stupid things felt different when I talked about them to people whose basic response was simply, "Yeah, I've been there. Sometimes I'm still there. Just keep coming back." It's as though we were being the same but we were practicing being different, an hour and a half at a time. Rehearsing it out loud, trying to build up in my head--from the collective voices of the other people in the meetings--this new entity inside me. A voice to tell me, when I was on the verge of making the same mistake, "You know that's not a good idea. You don't need to do that. Let's do something else instead."
Maybe that's all a new habit is, a voice that tells you "This is what we do now, at this moment. Remember, this is what we do." I'm listening. I'm listening hard for that voice.
posted by A Pilgrim at 5:53 AM
1 Comments:
for me, i know i've really changed when i suddenly realize that both the thinking and the body patterns have become unconscious - when i am doing something without conscious thought, without conscious physical exertion - when it jsut IS.
that's when i feel i've changed me. until then, i'm working towards change.
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