Things don’t change unless you do.

I turned 49 today and I feel like an entirely different person than I was one year ago. I’m not being overly dramatic, I actually feel like I have a new brain and a different soul walking around in the same body. This transformation didn’t happen magically this morning when I opened my eyes. Ha! If only it were that easy;)

This change occurred when I looked in the mirror one day and said I was tired of shoveling my own shit. My drinking was destroying me and significantly hurting those around me.

I had made myself endless promises that I would cut-back or stop for set periods of time, which I did. However, I always returned to the same destructive behavior. Go without drinking, go back to drinking moderately then before long, be disgustingly drunk on a regular basis. This was the pattern I had developed and it happened because that’s the behavior I was practicing. Funny how that works. What we practice is what we become. I think I’ve said that a time or two;)

The trouble was, I had no idea why I was turning to alcohol. It wasn’t due to some stressful outside circumstance; it was coming from deep within me. I knew the only way to find the answer was to admit to the fact that I didn’t have the answers. It was time for me to surrender.

“Be crumbled.
So wild flowers will come up where you are.
You have been stony for too many years.
Try something different.
Surrender.”
~Rumi

My dearest friend Jen sent me this quote as I was boarding a plane to go away for an extended period of time. I wasn’t sure what I needed but I knew what I was doing wasn’t working so it was time to try something different. Things weren’t going to change until I did so that’s what I set out to do.

It worked.

It worked because I worked. I worked to give awareness to what I was doing to myself. It worked because I accepted I couldn’t do everything on my own. It worked because I took action to change.

This change didn’t just happen because I decided to stop drinking. Actually, alcohol wasn’t the problem, it was a by-product of what was broken inside. Once I started to figure out what was broken, I could start working to piece it back together; which is what I’m doing each and every day now.

If we want our lives to change, we have to be willing to go deep. We have to be willing to look at what is driving destructive behaviors because simply trying to change the behavior doesn’t work.

What do you do that keeps you from finding peace and living to your highest potential? For me it was alcohol, maybe for you it’s over eating, under eating, neglecting your body, spending too much money, watching porn, avoiding difficult situations until they become catastrophic, pretending that you don’t have any problems at all….the list of destructive behaviors we as humans engage in is endless. It isn’t as simple as changing the behavior. If it was that simple nobody would be addicted, obese, in debt or in unhappy relationships. We have to change ourselves and the behaviors start to correct themselves.

If you want things to be different, you have to be willing to change. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to hurt. It’s going to be scary but….
It’s going to be worth it.