I’ve recently had a birthday, my 45th for that matter, and of course I’m in full midlife crisis mode. My whole world is changing around me, after the turmoil will it be better or worse I cannot truly say right now, what I can say is that changes are a’ coming.
Changes. We might like them or despise them but in the end is what life is all about. Changes. We might embrace them or fear them, but they’re always there. We change all the time, granted sometimes so slowly we don’t notice right away, we notice when somebody else points it out with something like this “wow, what’s up with all that gray hair?” Or they might be dropped on us by some accident or a feat of good fortune. There are always changes.
Big changes are something we all know about. Big happy changes like getting your dream job, marrying the love of your life or being a parent, those are big happy changes. There are also tragedies, personal or even global, an illness, a traffic accident, a death in the family, or maybe less dramatic, losing a job, a divorce, having the kids grow up and move out. All of this are big changes. This big changes might create opportunities that we never thought about before, and those are the ones we have to look for when they come, we can surf the wave, or we can wait for the dust to settle. Yes, you can do either, there is no recipe here, no one size fits all. Every occurrence will be different, you might be in a good place to start something new and change something else in your life before settling down again, or you might want to wait and hope for the changes to end as soon as possible and try to regain control of your life, keeping, as much as you can, a sense of normality. As you might know by now I’m more for a balanced point of view rather than an extreme one.
Small changes are different. If we don’t do anything changes will always be disruptive. If we don’t keep up our bodies or our things they’ll decay, a chip of paint off a wall won’t spontaneously repair itself. Our teeth will soon decay if we don’t floss and brush regularly. Those are natural changes that left to themselves will destroy more that produce, so we must keep an eye on upkeep of our bodies and surroundings. Seeing this, how small relentless changes can destroy something, we can ask ourselves the following “In the same way that there is destruction in small steps, can there be construction in small steps?” And of course the answer is yes. This is what we do when we exercise, we don’t see our body build muscle overnight, it takes time and dedication. If we go on a diet we don’t see results the next day. Those are gradual changes. But there are other aspects of our lives where this way of thinking helps us, but it’s not easy. Now we are entering the realm of habits. Good habits that replace bad ones. Bad habits creep on us without us really wanting them. We might one day relax because we are feeling a little sick and we might skip the gym and next thing we know we’ve been last seen there two months ago and our belly’s showing it. So we replace bad habits with good ones, and then we make sure we keep them. We make good habits stick by not letting them slip, good thinking. Now, we can go a step further, and ask “are there other things that I can change a little and that will make me a little better?”. As you might expect the answer is a big fat Yes. And this is not my idea this is best explained by what Dave Brailsford accomplished when he coached Team Sky, a British cycling team back in 2010, to Tour de France glory in 2012, 2013 and 2015. He called his approach “aggregation of marginal gains” and he described it as “the 1 percent margin for improvement in everything you do.” Everything you do. Not only exercising, tyre weight and pressure, diet, this are the usual ones, he went as far as to experiment on what pillow was best for a restful sleep, how to wash your hands so you get ill a little less and many other things that we might think are not important, but in the aggregate are important. This small marginal gains can help us achieve much more. Of course I’m not saying that all you need do is wash your hands properly, I’m saying this is something you need take care of as well as many other things in your life. Gradual changes that can bring big rewards.
So there you have it, changes big and small, good and bad, so many changes. If you tame your attitude to the big ones you can always come out stronger, and if you channel the small ones for your benefit you can also come out stronger and better. How do you cope with changes and make them happen will define how happy you can come to be now and in the future. Are you ready to make some good changes in your life? As always, please comment down bellow.
