Changes only happen when we go against everything we're used to doing

“Change. But start slowly, because direction is more important than speed”

“Life does not play with marked cards. Winning or losing is part of it”

-Paulo Coelho




Its been a heck of a year thus far, 2010 has pretty much been all about choices. Not just making them, but taking responsibility for them and dealing with the consequences both good and bad. An added bonus has been learning NOT to do this with the choices of others... Historically this has been a less than stellar area for me – The harder I tried to “do the right thing” the further from my goal I got. Once a situation started to get sideways, I would make every effort to fix it, inevitably causing more damage than repair. I spent a lot of time listening to the voice in my head tell me I needed to work harder. To change. To bear down and push through whatever was happening. It soon gets to the point where a hail-mary pass is the only option for success. For the record, this is not a sustainable model.

Before this all starts to seem too bleak, I will say this – my life was far from all bad. In fact, in a lot of ways, it was going better than it had in a long long time. The real issue with not addressing a problem at its root is that you risk having it become a part of a new foundation. In other words, the old bad shit can really fuck with the new good shit if it isn't dealt with, and when you finally start addressing those old choices you run the risk of uprooting things that you would much rather leave intact. Emotional/Relational Chemotherapy – kill off most everything and hope the good stuff was strong enough to survive.

If I were to push the analogy too far (which I typically do...) I would like to think that round one is done.
Verdict is still out as to if I will need another or not, but things are looking ok so far.


**I was recently introduced to the work of Paulo Coelho ( @paulocoelho ) – introduced might be a strong word; I saw a retweet of one of his quotes in I believe Portuguese from a friend and twitter's translation tool did the rest. I highly recommend you check it out. ( and by you I mean the one person who accidentally stumbles onto this blog in the year 2027 )