Several years ago I was sitting in traffic, stopped at a red light, and the car in front of me had a bumper sticker on it that said, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” I had a couple of hours that afternoon and sort of instinctively I followed this guy around – poor guy, he thought I was stalking him, I’m sure. It didn’t occur to me until much later in the day what that meant – ‘everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.’ Everybody wants to get better, but nobody wants to change. Not only is that impractical, it’s impossible. We are always changing, all the time. Every time we learn something new, we’ve changed. Everything around us is changing, ALL the time.

The speed of change is happening faster and faster. I remember sitting down at dinner, and my parents used to say, “It sure seems like time is speeding up.” Well, I’ve said that too, but I’ve grown to understand that time may not be speeding up, but the pace of change is speeding up, and that makes it seem like time might be speeding up.

There’s a book called The Singularity is Near that discusses the speed of change, and how technology is increasing that speed not at a linear level, but at an exponential level. As the speed of technology increases, the speed of change increases. And as humans, in order to keep up we have to learn to adapt to this change – and do it well.

With the speed of change happening faster and faster, this presents some challenges for us as humans. We like patterns. We like routines. We develop comfort zones. And comfort zones really breaks down to ‘what have I gotten used to.’ To illustrate just how uncomfortable even the slightest change can be, let’s try something. If you’re driving, wait till you get home before you do this. Fold your arms across your chest. You’ve got your arms across your chest, now take the arm that is underneath and put it on top. See how uncomfortable that feels? That’s just changing your arm position. Imagine how uncomfortable major life changes can be.

You can get used to anything. You can get used to governments lying to you, unhealthy relationships – the human animal can get used to almost anything. There was an HBO documentary that I saw a couple of years ago where people were living underneath the subway tracks in New York City. No light, rats the size of gallon milk jugs, but there was an entire city down there. People had gotten used to coming out from underneath the tracks at night, living their lives, and going back underneath the tracks during the daytime. It was amazing. But it does illustrate the point that people can get used to anything.

While comfort zones do provide some stability in our lives, they also present some issues when change is imminent. Back in the original podcast, I laid out some of my reasons why I believe that humanity is on the verge of a great leap in evolutionary awareness where things are going to start to get better – better than what we’ve gotten used to..

There are two ways that you can be out of your comfort zone. You can be out of your comfort zone because you are doing worse than what you are used to. You can be out of your comfort zone because you are doing better than what you are used to. My concern is for people who have gotten better than what they are used to. This is where self-sabotage starts to come in. You find yourself in a situation that is better than what you have gotten used to, and all you know is that you are uncomfortable – even in the new, healthier environment. To say that peace and prosperity is not included in all of our comfort zones currently is not a stretch.

Before we start talking about how to deal with change in a healthy way, let’s talk about some of the barriers to change. The first barrier to change that I find prevalent is “Cultural Ideals”. In other words, “this is how we do it where I come from.” Or “this is how we do it as a male, or a female, or this is how we do it in my family.” We set up rules, and unless we look at these rules and decide whether or not these rules are still relevant to us, we can let these rules dictate our lives from beginning to end.

The second barrier to change is “Habits“. Habit is auto-pilot. It’s something we’ve done so often that we don’t even really have to think about it any more. How many times have you gotten into your car after work and driven home and not really been aware of the right hand and the left hand turn that you made. You just sort of showed up at your front door.

Another barrier to change is “Attitude”. Attitude speaks to why are we changing. Are we changing because we want to change, are we changing because we see the benefit of change, or are we changing because we are being forced to? If you are changing because you’re being forced to, chances are it is not going to be as easy a change as you might like. You might drag your feet, dig your heels in, do slovenly work. Attitudes are a big barrier to change; however the most insidious barrier to change is “Perceived Lack of Personal Power. You don’t believe you can accomplish the change! Perceived lack of personal power is addressed in the last two pod casts, “Low Self-Esteem is the Root of All Evil”. I encourage you to check those out if you haven’t.

There are three typical responses to change. Let’s say you find yourself out of your comfort zone. The first response is to “Get Back” to where you feel comfortable. This is where self-sabotage comes in. Again if you find yourself in a situation that is better than what you have gotten used to and you feel uncomfortable about it, you might do something unconsciously that allows you to get back to where you feel comfortable. Relationships are really good example of self-sabotage, and I’ve done this myself. I have gotten into relationships with people who were very good for me, but I didn’t feel at the time that I deserved that relationship. It’s not like I said, “I don’t deserve this relationship,” but I did something that caused that relationship to end and I found myself back involved with people who weren’t good for me.

Another response to change is to “Replicate” your comfort zone, if you can’t “Get Back” you recreate it where you are at. After I left corporate change management, I got into personal recovery, drug addiction, behavioral addiction, alcohol addiction. I worked with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for eight years; I had thousands of students in that time. There were several of my students who told the same story. They had been incarcerated for many years. They had lived in a cell, and when they were released they went home and found themselves in a house, in a bedroom twice/three times the size of the cell that they had been living in for years prior. They felt uncomfortable in that environment. More than one student told me that they moved their stuff into the bathroom of their house because it was more like a cell, where they felt comfortable. That is recreating your comfort zone where you are at. “Getting Back” and “Replicating” your comfort zones is more of a ‘the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know’ mentality.

The third typical response to being out of your comfort zone is to “Transform” your comfort zone, change what you feel comfortable with. I have found it very useful to break down the change process into three steps. Each one of these three steps would work individually, but when you combine the three it really is very powerful. The first step in the change process is a “Change in Awareness”. You become aware that there is a new, different, better way of doing things – that’s “Change in Awareness”. Second is “Attentive Change.” When you discover that there is a new way of doing things and you want to change to that particular method, you have to stay focused on that method. The third is “Incremental Change” – little-by-little through staying focused with “Attentive Change” you will adopt the new behavior, and it will become your new behavior over time. An example of this is the way our kids are being taught to cover their mouths when they cough. When I was in school, we were taught to cover our mouths by putting our hand over our mouth when we coughed; our kids are not being taught that nowadays. Nowadays our kids are being taught to cover their mouth with the inside of their elbow. It makes sense from a “Change of Awareness” standpoint because if I sneeze into my hand and touch a door knob, and you follow me and touch that door knob, you now have my germs. I am not touching too many things with the inside of my elbow so I am spreading less germs. That would be “Change in Awareness”; now that I know that there is another way of doing it and a way that I perceive to be better, I have to stay focused on that new way of doing it or I will revert back to the old way. Every time I sneeze I have to tell myself cover your mouth with the inside of your elbow and incrementally a little bit at a time, over time, little bit, little bit, little bit… now that is my new norm, when I sneeze now I sneeze into the crook of my elbow.

That’s it for part one of “You Can Change Without Growing, But You Can’t Grow Without Changing” in a couple of weeks we will discuss the process of change and some tips that you can use to make the change process more comfortable.

Science, specifically quantum mechanics, has pretty well illustrated that at the subatomic level - protons, neutrons and electrons - that there is no difference between you and me and any other matter that exists in the universe - rocks, trees, birds, bees. There’s no difference.

Technology, through the internet and cellular technologies - you don’t even need a computer any more. Ideas can be everywhere at the same time. The same idea can be everywhere at the same time. It is very possible to have a common, shared awareness.

Religion has consistently come from one of two camps. There is an Eastern, organic universe where God is everything. There’s a Western, mechanical universe where God made everything and God is everywhere. However you choose to approach religion, they all say pretty much the same thing - God is everywhere, or God is everything. Everywhere includes you and me. There are seemingly apparent physical differences. That is easily explained to me when I consider the union of opposites, which suggests that nothing exists in the absence of its total opposite. Without a front, there can be no back. Without an up there can be no down. You are a different assemblage of protons, neutrons and electrons, but we’re all the same energy.

When those people who have put their faith in science and religion and technology come to the realization that their particular filters suggest that everything is everything, we’re all one, that we are all an infinity-plus number of facets expressing the same essence - that shift will lead people to treat others with compassion and empathy and patience and tolerance. And I believe that that is inevitable.

When I’ve told this story in the past, there are people who get it right off the bat. And then there are people who look around the world and see the horror and the degradation and the slavery and the genocide, and they wonder that if we are coming to a head where we are beginning to recognize that we’re all one, then why is this going on? That’s answered when you look at nature.

Look at animals. Animals who are wounded, injured, dying - they are the most dangerous. I see another one of the dominant dogmas of our time - the scarcity model - that suggests there’s not enough of everything to go around so I need my share of what there is - and I probably need to take a little bit of yours too because there’s not enough to go around - that scarcity model is dying. And the fear and desperation that exists in the world right now is the dying gasp of the scarcity model.

When enough people come to the realization that anything I do to you ultimately affects me, actually affects my life, my world - there is no separation. You and I are the same. We just have forgotten.

One of my heroes is Buckminster Fuller, and in future podcasts there will be a lot of his information presented. He recognized in the early ‘70s that the technology existed for every man, woman and child to have fresh drinking water, to have comfortable, safe, affordable housing. For 35 years, the technology has existed for every man, woman and child to have peace and security. You can’t think about things like peace if you’re hungry. Basic needs need to be met first. You need to have housing, you need to have fresh water, you need to have food before you can ever think about higher functioning things like art or even peace.

For the first 25 years of my life I believed what was being fed to me through the different avenues of media. I was 18 years old, and Reagan was president, and I was sure that he was going to blow up Russia and then assured mutual destruction. And so for the first 25 years I lived with that, but I realized that that wasn’t working for me. So I started to seek out alternative information - more hopeful, optimistic information. And some of the people who have influenced my way of thinking for the past 20 years have been Buckminster Fuller and Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky and Bob Marley and Terence McKenna - John Lennon and Michael Benner and the Dalai Lama and countless others.

Well this initial episode was meant as basically an overview, a thumbnail sketch - something to whet your appetite. What I hope to do is provide people with tools that they can use to foment change - healthy change in their lives. These are not new tools. These tools have been around forever. This is ancient wisdom. I feel confident enough to put my name on a couple of these exercises, but in general, this stuff has been around forever. Come at people from a bunch of different angles. Right now this information is coming from a bunch of different places. What the Bleep Do We Know? is a movie that talks about what we’re going to be talking about. The Secret is another movie that talks about what we are going to be talking about. Some of the criticisms of those movies are that they are basically just, “Think yourself into health and happiness.” And you can’t underestimate the power of positive thinking, but there has to be more to it than that. You can’t just lie on your couch and think, “I’m going to get a job today. I’m going to get a job today.” You actually have to get out and go look for work. You can’t lay on your couch and think, “I’m going to be healthier today, I’m going to be healthier today.” That helps, but there are specific things that you can do to take those thoughts and turn them into actions, and the actions are going to determine whether you are healthier or not. Your thoughts are the seeds that create the fruit of your reality.

So many of our thoughts, so many of our seeds, are poisonous. If you have healthy seeds, you’re going to have healthy fruit. So what I hope to accomplish with these podcasts is to give people the tools to take their poisonous seeds and transform them into healthy seeds, and then take those seeds and tend those seeds to fruition. My goal is to produce at least one of these podcasts per month. In the future I plan to address issues such as self-image psychology, stress and anger management, healthy relationship building, change management. My dream is that people who listen to these podcasts will utilize this information to affect positive change in their lives, thereby affecting positive change in the lives of the people that they know and love. I invite you to join us. There are many more of us than we are being led to believe.

Episode 2 of these podcasts will be entitled, “Low Self-Esteem Is the Root of All Evil.” Look for it September 1^st at optimismisaskill.com.

host: jim mclelland - music: anna huff - transcription: colleen mclelland - engineering: dave huff