Josh jumped up from the recliner, “We’re moving again!?” throwing the question at his parents. They sat quietly on the couch as he paced around the living room talking to no one and everyone all at once, arms being tossed in different directions as the movement punctuated each thought. “I just got my band started, I just found a part time job that I like, I just learned my way around, I just got comfortable in my classes and started making friends…”, he stopped pacing and glared at them accusingly; “You promised!”, and then stormed to his room punctuated by the slamming of his bedroom door. 

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Life is full of certainties and uncertainties. In Rethinking Change, we will examine change, one of life’s few certainties. Like it or not, change is one decision or life circumstance away from happening. You might be thinking, Not me, I am keeping everything the same. Say that to your next birthday, and the one after that and after that. The earth continues to turn giving us day and night, and continues to travel around the sun giving us seasons. The tides come in and go out, flowers die and then grow again, babies are born and people die. Change is all around us. This, however, does not have to be a bad thing. 

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As we explore change, you will get a taste of the science behind how we perceive and handle it, and be given new perspectives both scientifically and practically so that it is easier to manage. We will look at the good parts of change even in crappy situations as well as how to intentionally initiate change and some reasons why you might want to. As with all of the Ignite and Inspire series books, you will be given tools to take this inevitability and use it to steer your life instead of being blown around by it. 

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Each book in this series was brought about by my own experiences coupled with decades of mentoring and helping people. Regardless of age, race, sexual orientation, religion, etc, some of the same questions and concerns came up. Those are the subjects of this series. Every book is intentionally a short read with enough information to get you headed in a better direction. You will find further resources for each book on my website, MsJoysPlace.com, sorted by book and chapter so that you can grow in whatever area works best for you. There is no sense in reading a huge chapter on a section that you already have a handle on. Thus, the basic information in the book and then support on the website and in the Discussion Group. Information about both is in the back of the book.

 

Linear Versus Nonlinear

Why does even the thought of change make your heart beat a little faster, your palms sweat, and you feel a slight loss of control? Because we are wired to like what we know. Decades ago, science proved that we like what we are familiar with, even if the familiar is to our detriment. And to make matters worse, we have equal to or more decades of commentary that says that life should be a straight line of events (a linear life). So now we have generations of people programed to think that life is from point A to point B and if yours does not do that, the problem is with you. But it’s not. In reality, nobody’s life is linear. We all lead non-linear (not in a straight line) lives. In his book Life is in the Transitions, Bruce Feiler noted, “Instead of passing through a series of preordained life stages…, we experience life as a complex swirl of celebrations, setbacks, triumphs, and rebirths across the full span of our years.” He went on to say that, “Today, each of these staged constructs has been diluted, debunked, or discredited in some way. They’re too pat, too narrow, too grand…” This should be exciting to hear. It explains so much! It shows that you aren’t the only one, that you aren’t nuts, that thinking and being outside of the box is what is normal. Or in more truthful terms: there is no box; there is no normal. 

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Columbia University Professor George Bonanno, a leading grief researcher said that “The stage models are simply too tidy, they’re based more on wishful thinking than empirical data, and they put too much pressure on people to meet someone else’s expectations.” While he is referring to grief stages, the data shows in that study and many other studies related to various “life stages” that people came up with those descriptions (linear expectations) to help us understand what and why things happen. They meant well. Humans are designed to want to understand, for things to make sense. If we understand, we feel like we retain some level of control and have solid ground under our feet. Thus, in this case, various life stage explanations that we are supposed to adhere to. However, humans don’t fit into a neat little box. As much data has proven in the last 20 plus years, stages and a straight line life do not exist. 

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This is not only great news, but it also takes away the obligation to feel and be a certain way at a certain time. It allows you to be how you were created, to go with the flow as it works out in your life as you use your perceptions and your desires and decisions, not what was foisted on you in a “you should” based linear thinking of “life stages”. A very simple example of this is college. Not all high school seniors are ready for college. They know it, but they are on the conveyor belt of “should”. Some don’t go right away, get some life experience, then go and have a good experience. Some do go and drop out. Others go and cannot tell you what they did or learned. There are positive examples of those who went to college and did well. I am just trying to show that you don’t have to feel badly if you know deep inside of you, that you are not supposed to do this right now, even though the conveyor belt, the “shoulds”, say you do. 

 

To quote Mr. Feiler again, he stated, “I believe that this expectation that life will proceed in an orderly, predictable manner is a significant source of the dissatisfaction I experienced in my own life, and that I encountered in my hundreds of interviews…Most lives simply do not follow the tidy templates of linearity.” He interviewed 225 people, most of whom were strangers and found that not one of them lead a linear life. The stories were from plain to intriguing and every one of them had change as the theme or the norm of their life. The shy mom whose child got cancer is now a national advocate for cancer research, the famous Broadway actor turned minister, the teenage mom working multiple jobs getting her GED then a college degree now helping others who didn’t fit the mold, and so on. Change change change. Non non non linear. 

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Can you think of anyone who has lived a straight-line life? They were raised in the perfect home (lost about 98 percent of you right there), made perfect grades and had a completely balanced childhood, never had a pimple, went to college and never once had a break down or partied and always ate right and got adequate sleep and took all the right classes and made the Dean’s List, then got the perfect job, then married the perfect spouse and had the perfect children with the perfect vacations and the house was always orderly and lawn pristine and the … fast forward … it is time to die and they have zero regrets, have no twist and turn stories to tell. Did anyone come to mind? Most likely every person you thought might fit the mold of normal you realized, no, this thing happened, or that even sent them a different direction, etc. 

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I have read countless books, listened to even more podcasts and documentaries, have known thousands of people in my life, and I’ve yet to encounter even one linear life person. How great is that??? It means that change is normal and natural which means we are designed with the mechanisms to handle it! It also means, that you are not alone in your non-linear life, so you are not the odd man out. It’s all of us! 

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Two decades long prominent authors, speakers, and teachers, John Maxwell and Rick Renner, have both talked about having terrific parents and growing up in a loving household, yet both of them had their own personal struggles, some of which carried into their late twenties. Now, much older, neither of these men have said that they finally got it all together and then lived a linear life. They didn’t. And the lessons from their life twists, turns and crossroads decisions are part of what they teach from. That is what makes listening to theirs and other’s stories so interesting! You can see where they chose to change or life handed them no choice but to, and how they handled it. We get to learn from those who went before us. 

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Something New

If you have read any of my other books, you will notice that this one has significantly more citations. I did this because we are dealing with a subject that is bound in science and as well as your will. Although I have decades of personal experience with change and have helped many others during life changes, I wanted the researchers and scientists to do much of the speaking so that you know this isn’t my opinion. It is my hope that this extra information solidifies the points being made, with the biggest two being: you are designed for change, and you have a choice. Chapter 1 goes into all of that. To make it easier on you, the reader, I have quoted exactly where possible, or paraphrased using most of their words to explain complicated thoughts. All are noted in the text and the list of resources is found in the Bibliography. And as always, there are more resources for this book on my website. 

 

You might have figured out by now that change has two main causes: you chose to change or life hands you no choice but to. To put it a different way, you wanted things to be different so you started the change, or something happened in your life that made/is making it different. Either you happened to it or it happened to you. We will take a look at both sides to understand how ultimately, you steer the ship of your life even if it seems that you have lost control of it, you hate it, or anything other reason. 

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Finally, please don’t read this and think that's interesting or even mentally agree and move on to the next section. Slow down, stop even and think for a moment that this, right here, might just be that journey changing thing you have been looking for. Could it be? That you reading this right now is the open door you've been looking for? Consider the truths in this book and apply them and watch a newer, happier life unfold. Let’s get started!