Why Change Is Simple
Udumbara
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The potential for change often seems challenging—but once set in motion, change energizes itself to perpetual growth. There’s a paradoxical aspect of making life changes that isn’t talked about enough.
On the one hand, change is simple. Let’s say you want to start a daily walking habit. It’s as easy as picking a time, opening your front door, and putting one foot in front of the other for around 20 to 30 minutes a day.
On the other hand, it can feel hard. Maybe you don’t have time in your schedule to squeeze in one more activity. Or by the time you get home and have the time, you lack the energy or motivation to do anything but eat or collapse on the couch and watch TV.
Like many, I’ve experienced this paradox my entire life—as far back as I can remember. However, it wasn’t until the past few years that I began to understand it, and in doing so, I started to notice the different levers involved in successfully making a change, as well as the factors that make a challenge.
The way I now think about change is rooted in my belief that personal energy drives all action. To make a change, we need to apply extra energy in a particular area.
When It Feels Hard to Make a Change
I find it useful to think about personal energy like money in a bank account. We use our money to buy things and experiences, and generally don’t have much left over from each paycheck.In the long run, it’s possible to make more money, but in the short term, we’re pretty much limited by what we have.
Personal energy is similar in nature.
We invest our energy in accomplishing the various tasks that make up our lives. We can occasionally take out a loan—staying up late or relying on grit—but in the short-term, we’re mostly spreading out our energy in different ways.
Making a meaningful change in your life requires going against the current status quo, an act that requires extra energy since it means overriding what has become the path of least resistance.
Simplifying Change
I’m in the middle of conducting an experiment: For 100 days, I’m trying to be a more patient person, particularly toward my four young children.While it’s early yet to claim permanent success, I can report something rather surprising: how easy it is to be more patient if I want to be.
For the longest time, I’ve paid lip service to the idea of trying to be more patient. I would even have claimed it was something I was actively working on. However, things more or less stayed the same.
I could easily have concluded that being patient was hard in the same way that learning a complex skill is difficult—that I didn’t know how to do it, or what was required to be successful. I’ve learned that being patient is difficult in a similar way to the running versus walking example. You just need to apply more energy.
How to Master the Flow of Energy
Now that we’ve defined how change works and why it’s both hard and easy, let’s get down to figuring out how to make those realities work for us instead of against us.1. Learn to Channel Your Energy to Maximize Short-Term Change
One of the subjects I write about most is focus, because increasing your focus is one of the quickest ways to change your life. Most new habits or life changes fail because we don’t give them enough of our energy—not because we aren’t smart or virtuous enough. It’s hard to increase your energy in the short-term, but it’s always possible to steal that energy from a lower-value activity. That’s the idea behind focus.2. Increase Your Energy to Maximize Long-Term Change
After you’ve garnered the low-hanging fruit of redirecting your energy from lower to higher value pursuits, the next step is to increase your overall energy levels. The good news is that progress feeds upon itself and leads to increased motivation—a wonderful source of personal energy. There are other ways, too. Changing your attitude toward life is one way, and so is improving your patterns of sleep, diet, and exercise.3. The Hardest Part of Change Is Starting; Then It Becomes Its Own Energy Source
The importance of this point bears repeating. Initially, change is hard because it requires extra energy, but one of the most reliable sources of motivation is progress itself.If you stick with a change through the initial difficult period, you’ll eventually gain motivation, a form of energy that will make future change easier.
Many people get discouraged in the early steps of a change because they don’t know how they’ll sustain the effort. A new exercise routine may feel miserable at first, but over time, it will feel easier and feed your energy levels. You just need to stick with a change long enough to see the fruits of this virtuous cycle.
I’ve gleaned these lessons from studying the process of change in my own life. I hope they help to illuminate your own efforts and lead you to success.
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