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.