Making A Change

My son is currently is the position of watching a member of his social circle descend into drug-fuelled self-destruction. Despite help that’s been offered and loving parents, as well as plenty of warnings about the consequences, this person has just continued to sink deeper and deeper, alienating his friends and breaking the heart of his parents.

It’s an old and frequently-occurring tragedy. Why does it happen so often? The truth is that to many of us, wellbeing just doesn’t come naturally. If we relax our focus and allow ourselves to become guided just by our feelings, urges and impulses, the result is self destruction, or a life that is shorter and unhappier than it might have been.

This fact that many of us are just not naturally inclined to look after ourselves properly in today’s world is not our fault. We cannot help what our natural inclinations are. We didn’t want them or ask for them, they are an inherent part of us. We’re not bad people just because we have unhealthy inclinations, it wasn’t a choice we made. Long ago I learned to forgive myself and cast off guilt about dark feelings and desires within myself – they came uninvited.

However, though unhealthy inclinations are part of us, we still have a clear choice – to manage and control them, or let them rule us. This is a choice we must make every day, and several times every day. Managing yourself is a continual lifelong effort that never becomes “easy”. You must devote mental and physical energy every day. Like paying the rent, self-control is only yours for as long as you keep up the payments of time and effort.

This article is for two types of people: those who want to turn their life around and make a completely fresh start, and those like me who have let themselves go and relapsed, who have stopped paying the rent of time and effort and want to re-start doing so.

So how do we start? The absolute beginning of the beginning is to see a gap – a gap between what we want to be and do, and who we are and what we’re doing right now. Sadly many fall at this first hurdle – they simply can’t envisage who they could be and what they could do, unable to see anything other than who they are right now. As much as you may want to, you can’t help someone who either doesn’t want the help or knows what help they want.

The seeds of salvation can only sprout when we become aware of the difference we could make. If people love you for example, their happiness will rest in your hands. But even amongst all the people who are indifferent to you right now are many whose lives you could touch and make better by doing what you do well.

But to get to this point, we often have to reach a point where don’t like what we’ve become. For some, this could be as simple as a photo of ourselves and our own reflection, and not liking what we see.

Others have to be utterly disgusted with themselves, their lives so awful and unbearable that they can’t endure it any longer. For some, new love comes into their lives, like a lover or a child, and they don’t want to fail that new love.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible for anyone outside to predict what it will take to wake someone up or deflect them. Sadly for some nothing stops them, and there is nothing anyone can do for those who just don’t have the desire to change.

Let us then focus on those who really do want to make a fresh start either from rock bottom or because they have simply lost their discipline. The first thing to do happens in your mind – you have to cast off guilt and take on responsibility. Once you have apologised to yourself and everyone else you have hurt, whether that apology is accepted or not, it’s time to let the guilt go. No amount of effort of self-punishment can reverse what has happened. It is a waste of time and energy to try. You must move on from where you are now and with what you have now.

You must instead take on responsibility. Whatever your circumstances are, you must stop blaming them for what you do. This is the famous “Nuremberg Excuse”, claiming that the circumstances left you no option but to do bad things. In fact circumstances cannot make you do anything, they simply make the choices harder. They are still your choices! Stop blaming people, things and circumstances for what you do. Instead, without condemning yourself, do something different.

This leads us neatly to the next step in making a change. Having decided the time is right, apologised, let go of guilt and taken on responsibility, it’s now time to do something different. If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always have. It’s time to spend your day differently. For some, this will simply involve a new schedule, for others, it means going for help and sticking to a plan drawn up by others. Remember that things don’t have to be great to make a change, but you will have to make a change to make things great.

This leads us to the final step towards making a change – renewing it every day. If you have unhealthy inclinations as I have, every new day you must recommit yourself. If you’re an addict, you are an addict for life, and so every day for the rest of your life you must decide again not to choose to follow your inclination.

A final word to those who relapse. A relapse is like a toddler learning to walk who falls over. The answer is simply to get up and walk again. Many of us will go through many relapses. Without condemning yourself, you simply apologise and begin again, as many times as you need. So long as you keep getting up again, and are determined to stay up, you surely will.