The Motivation For Change

Change begins with awareness. It is easy to be unaware of our internal thoughts in our very busy world, we are surrounded by constant noise, conflict, and busyness distracting us. But in the quiet moments—right before we fall asleep, when we turn off the podcast, when we’re sitting in the car—we occasionally tune in to ourselves, to the thoughts swirling around in our consciousness. And there it is: the friction that we experience when there is space between where we are and where we want to be.

Sometimes, that awareness is personal—we want a nicer house or a better neighborhood, we want a partner with different qualities (or to be blissfully left alone!), we want our family life to be easier. Sometimes, it’s professional—we want a higher salary, a better position, more responsibility (or less!), recognition. Sometimes, it’s business—we want more clients, more revenue, better processes for our company.

The awareness of these thoughts makes you feel like you can’t settle. Something is out of your reach, and it causes you to become aware of the space in between.

We don’t like feeling that gap, it’s uncomfortable to realize that there is a delta between here and there. But that space is the key to your success! The awareness of that delta is the trigger that motivates us to change. Once we become aware of it, an unconscious process starts to churn—and we become restless. We start thinking about how things could be different if they changed. We start to assess the cost of not changing. We start to hope and to explore our options. And the churn becomes louder and more uncomfortable until it reaches a peak, and then—we decide to make a change.

It’s always a choice to make change, but we often make that choice because the cost of staying the same and being uncomfortable in the gap is too much for us to bear. Deciding to make the change is the “easy” part, the actual process of making change is the hard part, of course. But today, amidst the noise of your busy life, I want to challenge you to just spend some time finding the quiet and your internal thoughts, thinking about where that restlessness is percolating just under the surface. Those thoughts and feelings are worth paying attention to, they are calling you to a change for the better!