I recently heard someone say that it is not a matter of science, but a matter of psychology when it comes to how it is we change our beliefs. When I heard it, it was like another piece of the puzzle fell into place. As someone in the business of change, both personally and professionally, I am ever trying to understand what it is that gets us to open enough to take that step into unknown territory. To enter into the rich and mysterious place of change.

Willingly.

It’s not like we don’t know something needs to shift. It’s not like we’re not getting feedback from our lives and others that something really must change this time. It’s not like we all don’t long for something more. We do. So why don’t we change then?

For sure, we’re afraid. Afraid we won’t be up to the task. Afraid to lose our hard won identities about who we believe we are. Afraid our lives won’t fit us anymore. Afraid of losing something. Afraid others will leave us. Afraid to admit that what we’ve been doing was foolish, and even destructive, and has maybe even hurt others. Afraid, it’s too late.

So many fears all piled into one resistant, and often intractable, blob.

But if we had a way to enter more gracefully and intentionally into The Land of Change, maybe we wouldn’t be so afraid. Maybe we would be able to bear the discomfort around all the adjustments we would need to make with more courage. Personally, I believe that way is seeded in wanting something more than what you’re afraid of, and then honing in on that with great single-mindedness and perseverance.

If you had that, would you enter into the change more willingly? Would you be able to shift because what you wanted was more powerful than your fears? I think so. I would even go so far as to say, I know so.

To be clear, you already have that. We all have that. It’s a matter then of pulling it to the surface so you can see it and be energized by it. What’s yours? What do you secretly long for? What pulls at you? What have you been wishing for your whole life?

To change it is to evolve. It is to move closer to what lives deep within us. It is to contribute at the highest of levels. With that known, how does change look to you now?

It’s hard to know what to write about at this time of year that doesn’t sound like a platitude. That doesn’t ring hollow. Or that doesn’t inflict some burden on us that we should be experiencing things in a certain way, when maybe we’re not. But as it goes whenever I’m in short supply of what to write about, a real gem dropped into my lap. A yoga teacher I love said something this week that feels like an enduring approach to a life well-lived. No matter the times. What she said was this:

“Locate your center. Move from there.”

At the time she was offering an instruction for a particular posture we were in; guiding us to go into the core of the body as a starting place before reaching out through the limbs. But as all great guidance goes, this sentiment can be applied to all the areas of our lives; helping us navigate through times that may feel confusing, triggering or overwhelming.

In life, locating your center, is all about starting with yourself exactly as you are. There is no reminder here to be grateful or to see things in any particular way. No instruction to rise above anything. Instead, it’s about knowing where you are, and anchoring yourself into the core of yourself before you reach out into the world.

This is different from believing you need to show up in a certain way. Different from expecting yourself to feel a certain way. Different from needing to measure up to some internal or external standard around how you must meet the times.

Instead, this is a moment to moment call to return to yourself over and over again, and to step forward from there. To speak from there. To act from there. To go in before you go out. No external instructions to tell you how to be or feel or act because when you go in before you go out, you connect to wisdom that is eternal, along with a clarity that transcends party lines, political correctness and social niceties.

And it is as simple as asking yourself, “”What is here for me at this moment, and can I be with it?” Whatever it is. Not as a way to indulge anything. Or to judge anything. Or to feel guilty about anything. But instead, a kind of going into yourself that allows for an honest recognition of what it is you find at the center of yourself. It is from there you are able to authentically, powerfully and respectfully step forward.

If you were to ask the average person what they most wanted for themselves or their kids, I think many would say “happiness” topped their list. But I also think this is about as far as many people go with what one could argue needs to be a necessary examination of something so important to you.

For starters, do you even know what being happy means, what it costs or even how to get there? I don’t think we do. Which is why it’s so easy for us to be manipulated into believing all kinds of things when it comes to what happiness is and where it comes from.

“Good fortune, prosperity, a state of well-being and contentment” are what the dictionary has to say about happiness. Seems like something worth going for. These days though, this worthy state is fraught with all kinds of problems, misdirections and brainwashing.

In our heavily influenced and commercialized world we are being sold to by billion dollar companies what well-being and good fortune looks like. Guess what? Happiness looks exactly like having things. Their things in the shape and form of products and services. Or perhaps it’s all about having lots of followers or garnering lots of likes for curating your life on social media and exploiting yourself by posting it all to be used as a kind of fodder for your ever-hungry “friends.”

Then there are all the streaming and online services that make their images of other people look so enticing, while creating big feelings in you. These externally induced feelings are what you go on to equate with a kind of contentment and good fortune that compel you to sit and watch for hours on end as figures on a screen go on to have the life you want. Or maybe, being glued in front of a screen helps you forget the life you are living that you don’t want.

Either way, you call it happiness.

Of course we can’t forget about the drugs. All the wonderful drugs that will create a pseudo state of happiness that can be purchased in pot shops or through ask your doctor campaigns. And if that’s not your jam, your happiness can be bought by your next online purchase and delivered right to your door the next day. No effort on your part other than to push a button.

None of this is happiness and we deserve better. We deserve better than to believe our well-being can be bought and sold. We deserve better than to medicate ourselves into some false and illusory state that we now equate with contentment. But because so many of us are doing it, we don’t much question ourselves, and even if we do, we hide out under the cover of the herd.

As much as we may be going along for this ride, deep down, we know we are being lied to. More to the point, we know we are lying to ourselves. That’s why whatever we do in this modern day frantic pursuit of happiness always falls flat, always needs another fix, and always is at the hands and mercy of a thing that someone else is willing to sell us.

Happiness is an inside job. It doesn’t look like what Hollywood portrays and it definitely does not come in a pill. It is hard won. It is fleeting. It is honest. It is a choice. It is enduring in its simplicity and it is personal to you. What might it look like?

Personally, I take my cues here from a synonym for happiness. “Blessed.” What is it that makes you feel blessed? For me, it looks like watching the moon or your kid play t-ball. It looks like sitting down for a meal you prepared with those you love. It looks like being with a good friend for a walk in the woods. It looks like getting your chance to be here and learning and growing yourself into who you most want to be.

I’m in the middle of teaching my Healer Within program and I am prepping for the class that focuses on what I refer to as “Learning the Language of Your Body.” In other words, coming to see the symptoms and sensations of the body as vital and necessary communication you want to be in touch with. Working with this material keeps drawing me back over and over again to one essential truth: In order to learn the language of your body, you must be willing to go beyond “wrong” when it comes to what your body is doing.

This is not easy to do. In fact, it’s exceedingly difficult given the intense conditioning by our current conventional medical system that insists, despite any evidence to the contrary from other health systems, that any imbalance in your body is a problem, an inconvenience, a misstep on the part of your biology that must be addressed with pills and procedures.

There’s more. For you to suspend the belief that there is something wrong with your body is also to tap into another deep-seated piece of conditioning we are all subject to: There is something wrong with you. Something wrong with you if you think differently than your tribe. Want differently than what the culture offers up in terms of its insane pace and inhumane approach to life and living. Feel differently about what you are told and sold when it comes to who you are and what you are capable of.

In other words, don’t stick out, don’t be too great, don’t rock the boat. Instead, do all that you can to never be wrong in the eyes of another.

Bottom line? To even consider to begin to unwind from the wrongness you unconsciously direct at yourself and your body each and every day is to knowingly make the choice to depart from any and all of the places you make yourself wrong. Whether those places exist in your own mind, or are reflected back to you from a consensual reality that is predicated on you fitting into it. Even if that means it needs to snuff out any chance of you questioning the current reality by undermining you with a big dose of, “You’re wrong to step out of line as we have drawn it.”  

This can feel like an enormous task and even quite scary to take on. Why? Because we use making ourselves wrong to dim our light in order to belong. And we use something being wrong with our bodies as an escape hatch to avoid getting to know our bodies more fully, while learning how to claim full responsibility for them.

However. It can be simplified and made doable by asking one penetrating question:

If I wasn’t making myself/my body wrong right now, what would I know?