CHANGE or DIE: What Will You Decide?

“Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.”  - Newton’s First Law of Motion, from the Principia‘s Latin

Steve Jobs, who is now sadly gone from our planet, said: “For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” For a man who dropped out of school, got fired from his job, and decided to succeed anyway, I sense that the core strength of this inspirational man is that he embraced change. No doubt kicking and screaming at times, but saying yes, nonetheless.

Newton observed that either in motion or at rest, FORCES will impress upon our lives the need to change. It is the most inevitable fact of life, and ultimately culminates in our departure, our death. Perhaps at the core of our resistance to change is our fear of death – getting deep here for a Sunday morning – but it does seem to be at least somewhat true. I see fear of change around me all the time: politics, families, relationships, companies, organizations, teams, ideas, conversations, my mind’s chatter. I see fear of change as the death of us all, and when the forces that Newton wrote about come pounding at my front door, I open it wide and say: Oh, it’s YOU again. Ok, if you must, come on in.

Then I brace myself for the ride ahead. Bumpy, volatile, scary as all get out.

I am currently working with a client who avoids change like nobody I have ever seen before. And he is highly skilled at hiding this fact, while he gives lip service to being on-board but secretly and insidiously thwarts all efforts to develop, engage in, and sustain intelligent change. Exhausting. I have been creating in my mind a game plan to diplomatically yet directly address his resistance and the cloudy way he acts as if he has gotten on the change train, but in reality is sitting on the platform, alone. I wonder if he understands that the train’s destination is almost always POSITIVE. I wonder if he understands that the FORCES of his professional life have already been impressed upon him and he can either change or die. In this case, death means hitting the glass ceiling of his career and eating the dust of the person next in line, who, by the way, is all about intelligent change even though this ambitious young man admits that it makes him feel exceedingly uncomfortable.

All the hours I spent in my life meditating and contemplating the fact of change, every moment, every inhale, every exhale… have perhaps twisted my perspective (in a good way) regarding change. I kind of get off on it now, most of the time anyway, and I wonder how I can empower others I work with to wake up, grow up, and say a holy yes to moving beyond inertia, beyond their status quo, and beyond “reality is how we do things around here.” One of Jung’s Six Human Needs is adventure which I interpret as including change, so that is how I have framed it. For my client who is alone on the train platform, I have decided to just tell the truth about what I see… then wait. I might show him this article and ask: does this sound like anybody you know? I might show him that his own inertia is creating some serious roadblocks at his company, no matter how smart, hard-working, and loyal he is – and he is, indeed, all of these things, too.

Control is futile. We can organize, plan, and execute accordingly, we can even convince ourselves that we are in control most of the time, but if we do not include change in our grand designs, we will get stuck. Newton’s forces will show us otherwise, and then the death of our best laid ideas is sure to follow. Finally, I ask myself when my own resistance gets out of hand: Michele, are you going to change or die? My answer: I am not ready to die just yet. After all, change is not as difficult to live with as being stuck and letting inertia suck the marrow out of my short life on this beautiful and complex Earth. Onwards.

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