Have The Courage to Change Your Life

I recently was given a small book. It has not many pages but the information it contains is disproportionate to its size. The thoughts provoked by this book can be life changing for those who are able to grasp its importance. It is not an unknown book, in fact it is very well known, its title ‘Who Moved My Cheese’, Dr Spencer Johnson. It is essential reading for anyone who can read. For anyone struggling with a decision.
One of the great things about Dr Johnson is that he is not a medical doctor or therapist but an international business management specialist. In this capacity he understands the fear that is inherent in most peoples lives.

I realize that most people who read these pages of mine are not business or financial managers. But people in the ordinary walks of life who have exactly the same problems as the business manager whether it is managing the household budget, moving house, wondering how to deal with difficult children, trying to organize a party for friends and family. Think a little broader and you will see that your problems are no different to the international business manager, it is only the scale that is different, the emotions involved in those decisions are no less important or less energy sapping. The other thing that most people have in common with the international business manager is that they fear making a mistake. Very few people can honestly say they are completely happy or satisfied with their lives but fear doing anything about it. They fear moving from their job because it has illusionary security, they fear leaving a worn out marriage because of the illusionary dangers of being alone, beginning again. They fear change incase they make a mistake. People often tell me that they made a mistake when they married or moved into a particular job or vocation and they don’t want to make the same mistake again, ‘I wouldn’t have done it if I knew it was going to be like this,’ so they stay where they are, in the mistake.

The truth is they did not make a mistake. At the time the decision was made it was the correct decision but circumstances changed and what began as a good decision is no longer a good decision. ‘I would not make the same mistake again’ is a phrase I hear time and again. But I repeat, it was not a mistake when you took the decision and unless you are prepared to accept that the world and the people in it are going to change and that you and your life also need to change then you are left behind. The man you married was perfect at the time of the marriage but he changed or you did and so you need to make a fresh decision, a new start. The job you took was perfect when you began a few years or even months ago but the circumstances changed and it is no longer the perfect job. There is no need to fill yourselves with guilt about making wrong decisions, about making mistakes. Whatever you did was right for you when you took the decision it is just that you need to update those decisions from time to time, to ask yourself, am I happy? If not don’t go around complaining about it, make a new decision, do something, bring yourself back into happiness. If you cannot change the situation, because you have young children, a big mortgage, then change the way you think but something has to change, you or the situation or your health will deteriorate.

Change is what our lives and the world is about. Situations can change in a day, or so it would seem but mostly they come more slowly, it is just that we refuse to see the change coming until it is impossible to ignore it any longer. What if we refuse to change when change is so essential to our spiritual growth? It is in these situations that personal disasters often overtake our lives. The loss of something precious or important such as loss of health or the loss of a job that we have had for years and though not happy it had provided a feeling of security, a security which is about to be lost. I know many people who have gone through the struggles of cancer who tell me how their illness changed their lives, how they grew from the experience. There are so many people who have been forced to move from a job or situation which they thought they could not live without only to find that their new life is much happier than the one they were forced to quit.

Why are we so reluctant to change? It is all about that little emotion called fear. Fear is the block to change. Mostly we find excuse after excuse to avoid facing the fear and bringing change into our lives. We fear the unknown, preferring unhappiness and looking for excuses, blaming people or situations for our unhappiness. We blame the boss, the partner, the children, the government, even the weather, but we rarely face the truth which is that we and no one else are to blame for our unhappiness. Of course I am not referring to totally unacceptable situations such as war, famine and other horrors that the innocent get caught up in. In this writing I am referring to ordinary people in normal situations who have every reason to be content and happy but are not because they fear making changes in their lives.

If you were totally free of fear how would you change your life? I can think of no worse horror than leaving this world at the end of life and going into the next phase of learning with the thought ‘all those wasted years, why did I not do something about it?’
It’s what I said in my last letter, you were not born to satisfy the expectations of another but to live your own happiness in your own unique way. But the million dollar question is DO YOU HAVE THE COURAGE TO MAKE THE CHANGE INTO HAPPINESS?


Malcolm S. Southwood, 2008