How to embrace change as a way of life.

Melbourne, Australia

There’s a common idea out there that humans don’t like change. Not only that, there’s a common sentiment that humans aren’t good at change.

We resist it. Fight it. Deny it. Whatever we need to or can do, to avoid change, we do it. Unfortunately, it often turns out that despite our best efforts, we can’t stop the tides of change turning.

It would seem that change really is the way the world works. Everywhere we look in nature, there is constant change. To try and stop change is as futile as trying to stop the tides from shifting. It would take a lot of effort, and eventually you would fail anyway.

Underneath the surface of it all, it’s not so much that we don’t like change, as the fact that we actually don’t know how to embrace it.

We have never been taught how to change and even when we have, it’s been taught in an operational, linear way, inspired by the Industrial Revolution and without the embrace of nature’s laws.

Not only that, we’ve been taught by generations previous, a very goal-oriented way of life which leaves very little room for adjustment or adaptation.

Learning to embrace change is the single most important skill anyone can learn in life.

When you can learn how to embrace change, you can navigate anything in life. It is the skill that cuts across all other skills.

The only constant is change

This idea that the only constant is change, was first proposed by Greek philosopher, Heraclitus but it’s been in existence long before he gave it language.

How? Because it’s a universal truth and the law of nature. We wouldn’t be where we are today without change, in every sense of the word.

There’s a good chance you wouldn’t be where you are today, without change.

Learning to embrace change, makes you adaptable. And being adaptable, makes you self-sufficient. If you can adapt and change, you can survive in any environment. It is only in the modern, developed world, that we have lost touch with what it means to embrace change.

However, it’s critical we get back in touch with the principles of change and by virtue of that, the principles of nature.

The laws of change (and how to embrace them)

Principle #1 - Change is constant; embrace change and you’ll be set for life

Here’s a metaphor to illustrate the point:

You can’t step into the same stream twice. For it’s not the same stream, and you’re not the same person.

Sit with this for a moment. Re-read it a few times. Within this statement alone is everything you need to know.

The stream is constant so long as the water flows and yet the water is ever-changing, just like life is. The problem with this idea for us as humans, is not the stream itself but how we relate to it. We try to grab onto the stream, make sure it stays, build damns and walls and run into it and try fill up our buckets before it runs out.

But this is based in fear and scarcity.

Instead, we can learn to read the rhythms of nature, to learn when the stream is flowing more strongly and to find other streams that we can visit when our main stream runs dry.

Principle #2 - Learn to let go

The more quickly and easefully you can learn to let go, the easier your life will be. Short side note - I was at a retreat in the UK in June this year called the 100 Human Experience with Tony Riddle (someone I have greatly admired for a while). We’d just done a breathwork with 100 people in this huge tent on this big beautiful property in Somerset. I’d took the mic and told Tony how nice it was to just let go.

He looked at me with a wry smile on his face, and replied, “but what were you holding onto in the first place?”

Sometimes we don’t even know what we’re holding onto and the irony of letting go is that it’s the biggest anti-skill I know. What do I mean by that?

You get better at it the less you try. For example, you don’t fall asleep by trying to sleep harder do you? You have to let go and surrender, then eventually you fall asleep and don’t even remember how it happened.

Principle #3 - Breath

Another side story for you. I was on a run through the bush with a good mate of my mine Jamin Heppell a few years ago, and we were catching up on life. Jamin and I met when we both worked together in the early days at The Man Cave, a charity focused on equipping young men with emotional intelligence tools.

Jamin was telling me about everything he’d moved through since starting his leadership development business and travelling the world, running marathons and climbing mountains. I was dumb-founded - “dude, this is huge. You’ve moved through so much. How did you get through it all?”

He took a few moments, before answering simply, ‘by breathing.’

When we stop breathing, it’s because we’re afraid. However, when we stop breathing, we also disrupt the natural functioning of our body. Breathing, is like building a damn wall and hoping that will stop the stream of water. But eventually the damn wall is either going to break or being flooded.

When we breath easefully, our body (and mind) can function how they need to.

Principle #4 - Work out where you’re going (and why)

To embrace change in our lives, we need to know where we’re going and why.

Viktor Frankl is someone that has thought about this deeply and has the lived experience to show for it too. Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapist who spent many years in concentration camps during WWII and used this time to observe patterns in human behaviour. His book, Man’s Search For Meaning, is still one of the most powerful books ever written in my opinion.

During his time in the concentration camps, he observed the following:

“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”

When we know our why and we have direction and purpose, we can persevere through enormous challenges. The how is where the magic happens - discovering your why is where the work is to do. The how will look after itself.

Principle #5 - The path is the goal

There truly is no end point or destination in life. The sooner we can fall in love with the path, and find our way onto it, the better. As humans, we love the outcome as much as we love the process.

Imagine you were to click your fingers right now and get everything you wanted in life. You had the house, the car, the partner, the family, the body and the business. You’d be happy right? But, it wouldn’t actually mean anything because you didn’t have to do anything to get there.

The path is the goal. Everyday, our goal is to find and stay on the path. Our frustration with life when it’s not going our way, is because we can tell we’re not on the path. Find the path, then implement routines, rituals, strategies and systems that allow you to stay on it.

Principle #6 - Trust yourself

To embrace change as a way of life, we need to learn to trust ourselves. This relies on firstly, us knowing ourselves better than anyone. Then, accepting ourselves fully also. Every, single, damn, part of us. The ugly, dark parts as well as the love and light parts. No exceptions.

From acceptance, we can move to action. When we trust ourselves, we have established ourselves as a soverign human being that has agency and can make choices for ourselves. It’s not our fault that we didn’t develop this, because our schooling system was setup to do the opposite.

Our schooling system was designed to teach us to be good little boys and girls and to sit up straight in class and to learn a set curriculum. It wasn’t designed to teach us to think for ourselves, so we have to go and learn this once we finish. We have to effectively un-learn the school way of being and re-learn what it means to be human.

Once we do this, and we establish trust with ourselves, we develop the ability to become what I like to call, ‘unfuckablewith.’ When you’re unfuckablewith, you are sovereign and can make choices for yourself. From this place, you can do what you actually truly desire.

Principle #7 - Own your desires

What do you want? Truly.

To embrace change as a way of life, you will need to face this question at some point (and own what the answer is). We can only go so long in our lives of denying our desires before they catch up with us. It is innate in us to have desires, and it is innate in us to want to go after them.

Denying our desire is doing no one any favours and is really only the outcome of deeper desire to fit-in to society, to be non-threatening and to ensure that we don’t stand out in the group.

But owning your desires is one of the most powerful things you can do. It allows you to identify when an opportunity is in alignment, or not. It also allows people to help you. Finally, it leads to that deeper, full-body satisfaction, when you’re in pursuit of what you want and when you actually get it.

Principle #8 - Pay attention to your environment

None of this happens in a vacuum. To embrace change, you need to pay attention to your environment on a both a micro and a macro level. How do people respond to you? What are the ways in which you notice people coming towards you v being repelled by you?

What are the opportunities that you’re noticing in the world around you? One of the things I’ve come to love about building a business, is that good business is really good problem solving. When a business solves a clear problem, it provides value to society and when it does this, people will pay good money for the goods and services that business is selling.

But to do this, we must pay attention to our environment. Become observant, notice what’s going on around you, breath and respond accordingly.

Principle #9 - Slow down and cultivate presence

For all of the above to be possible, you need to go slow. When we slow down, our awareness expands (literally), we become more present and we therefore gain access to more relevant action. When we slow down and cultivate presence, we effectively ‘come into the room.’

Not only do we gain access to more information, time starts to feel different and we start to experience an even more rich version of reality. Try it now if you like… take 5 deep, intentional breaths, look around and simply be present.

From presence, we can take action. From stillness, we can move. But it starts with slowing down.

Principle #10 - Follow your highest excitement

The thing above all else that will allow you to perservere through whatever challenges you’re navigating, is if you’re in pursuit of something that you are genuinely excited about.

Not only will this help you tap into an energetic reserve in yourself that is effectively infinite (source energy), but you will also become magnetic to other people because they can see and feel your energy.

Don’t be the guy at the party that tells people he works in finance because it ‘pays the bills’ - that screams of someone that is deep down unsatisfied and is just doing what he needs to do to get by. You were put on this earth to do far more than ‘paying the bills’ and you have inhere gifts, talents, desires and goals that we need you to express.

When someone is following their highest excitement, they pull other people along with them. Slow down, notice what you’re genuinely interested and excited by, let go of the conditioned ideas you might have around what it means to build a career, (eg. doctor, lawyer etc). and notice what you would genuinely love to pursue.