Initially, after you commit to changing something in your life, it feels really empowering. When I first moved out to Portland a couple months ago, I was wired. Usually, I find that exciting feeling continues as you make the first steps, buying a new bike, joining a book club, quitting your day job, whatever. But once you get past that point when you made that initial commitment, and when you get into the day to day of practicing that new hobby or working that new job, it can start to drag. Even if you’re following your heart and doing something you love, it’s a pain to get up before the sun rises to fit that run in, or pick up that guitar when you could just as easily vedge out and watch TV instead. At that stage, it’s pretty easy to get discouraged.
I kind of expect my life to be continuously going upwards and always getting better, and I’m often caught off guard when I look at my life and find myself moving backwards. But of course, that’s part of the journey! Remembering this quote has really helped me:
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”Sidenote: I think this quote is actually about social change, but my favorite thing about quotes is that they can really mean whatever you want them to! Anyways, when you're in the messy middle of changing something in your life, and having to deal with the steep learning curve of learning something brand new, it’s important to keep the faith and remember that change comes slowly, and not always linearly. When you’re getting discouraged, it’s always great to look at how far you’ve come, and also how close you’re getting to another world.
- Arundhati Roy
from ken
Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com
photo by SergioTudela
Hey man,
ReplyDeleteBeen reading all your posts but I guess ill just comment on this one. Give you a little perspective from a banker.
My day job (and night job) was doing menial tasks 18 hours a day for the summer. Formatting, copying and pasting, etc was what I spent the majority of my summer internship doing. And I enjoyed most of it. Why? Mainly because I was able to see the purpose of my job. I understood that the task needed to get done so some upper level guy could see it and then send it to another upper level guy who would use it and hope to gain some business from it. Yes, 90% of my work was not included in the final product, but I understood that this was part of the job. It was necessary to created 100 powerpoint slides for the sake of keeping one.
So now on to you falling off your bike. Think about it th is way. You will ride home over those same tracks day after day and for you to expect never to fall off your bike ONCE suggests an over confidence in your biking abilities and suggests you think that every action that happens in your life, you have control over. Clearly this is not the case. You know this is not the case.
Lesson? Be excited to fail and understand that it has to happen as part of a process of what ever you are trying to achieve. After each failure, you know you are one failure closing to achieving your goal (if you decide that goal are good).