Our lives are stuck. All right, take a discount — most of our lives are stuck. Somewhere.
And I have been obsessively occupied for the last eight years with a thoroughly practical question: why do human beings not manage to change?
To say that question is complex is the mother of understatements, but I will not leave you with nothing.
And let this be clear — I was not talking about starting something new. I was not talking about dramatic opening ceremonies. That is small change.
Real change is change you sustain, perpetuate, and turn into a habit.
One day after five years you put on a tracksuit and went for a run? So what?
Keep it up for two months and there is something to open the champagne about.
I do not much believe in types, and I am no devotee of folk personality analysis. My experience shows that there are three problematic mental positions, each of which threatens to lodge your life in a swamp.
One. The person who does not believe it is possible.
Not for people in general — for themselves specifically. They can cite every reason, and every reason is a description of the past presented as a law of nature.
Two. The person who is waiting to feel ready.
Readiness is not a state that precedes action. It is a state produced by action, which is why waiting for it is a closed loop that can absorb a decade without ever feeling like avoidance.
Three. The person who has confused activity with change.
This one is the most painful, because they are working hard. They read, they attend, they discuss, they plan. They have a great deal of evidence of effort and none of movement — and because the effort is genuine, nobody around them can name the problem either.
I admit openly that in the course of my life I have been through every one of these categories, and will be again. And while you read the list, remember one short sentence: it will not sort itself out.