Interior Design
When clients come into my office and talk about their desperate need to change, I always catch a spark of fear in their eyes. It’s there only for a moment, but it’s there all the same. They are saying: “I don’t know if I can do this, I want to change but don’t believe I can”.
Changing a habit (or several), changing life situations, relationships, jobs, changing something about themselves, borderlines on the terrifying. This is BIG stuff. And in being ‘big stuff', it automatically gets placed in the too hard and painful bucket, making any desired, positive change joyless.
Can you imagine if it was fun to change your habits?
Say you wanted to lose weight. Would you associate the changes you need to make to your diet, exercise and lifestyle as joyful? Not many would. That’s why it’s so grueling. Losing weight is seen as being painful, difficult, unpleasant, depriving and, let’s face it, joyless.
‘Change’ easily becomes a repulsive word.
Change implies discomfort.
It means I have to do things differently and that means extra work. I have to behave differently, reorganise my time, do things I don’t want to do, deprive myself of soothing pleasures. I have to make decisions that I don’t necessary feel at ease making. I have to cut things out and add others things in. It’s a complete upheaval.
Is it any wonder that I register fear in my clients’ eyes when they talk about ‘the need to change’?
As soon as I recognise this hesitation or fear in my client, my immediate response is usually “Great! Let’s have fun doing this” and its met with a look that says perhaps I’m the one who needs a therapist!
Fun. Joy. Laughter. Delight. Excitement. Pleasure. Happiness. Luxury. Bliss. Experimental. Curiosity. What if we associated these words to those little habits or irritations we wishes to alter? After all, the change we seek is for our betterment, is it not?
Why should feeling empowered be regarded as punishment?
That’s crazy, right?!
I’m not saying that all change is easy, sometimes it dreadfully difficult. But it need not be soul crushing.
It’s like rearranging a room in your house. You’re ready for a new look, need to clean behind the sofa, you want a different feel to the place. First, you’re moving furniture to see where it might look better. You notice all the dust balls. You don’t leave them there! You get the vacuum cleaner out and you clear it up. You wipe down skirting boards that have been hidden for a few years.
When we start out changing something with ourselves, we might notice that we have got a bit too comfortable. Making a shift brings a few things up to light that really are not serving us. We need a bit of dusting, as it were.
You find things you thought you lost and it’s fun to be reunited with some of these. Have you every found these little treasures you thought had gone? It’s lovely to reconnect with them. In the same way it’s lovely to reconnect with something we haven’t done in a while that was good for us on many levels, once upon a time.
You may find bits that you don’t like and you deal to them. You collect the rubbish and waste no time throwing them in the bin. What you no longer need you can ditch, right away. You will notice that some uncomfortable stuff surfaces as you start to change and you may have to face some truths, and ditch some of the rubbish in your life.
You might add a few extra touches to refresh the room and make it more inviting or comfortable. You may try something new and discover it’s fun and good for you too.
The end result is the same room with a different look and feel. It’s revived, remodeled and cleaner. A little remodeling brings the room to life. And you feel a sense of achievement and joy as you lounge in your new space
Now change like that? That’s a far “fresher” approach, don’t you think?