It’s morning. You’re at the office sleepily making your way to the kitchen for coffee. You turn the corner and feel a brief shot of adrenaline as you see a new coworker leaving the kitchen. You know you should say hello and make some small talk; after all you have been trying to be more outgoing lately… but instead you give them a quick smile and quietly get your coffee.
In that instant, your brain has weighed a lifetime of experiences. Before you even had a conscious thought, your brain decided that today is not the day. Self-improvement desires be damned. It’s in this fraction of a second that you also have the ability to choose change.
Most of the time, we don’t even recognize the choice. We live life on autopilot and become frustrated that we can’t ever seem to make progress. Our brains are really comfortable doing what they’ve always done. Neurons that fire together, wire together. This does our New Year’s Resolutions no favors.
But there is hope. Learn to recognize these fleeting moments. Get excited that each one of them is an opportunity to change. Each time you are successful in overcoming your pre-disposition, your brain will include that new experience in its next calculation. It will get easier and easier to choose the new path.
Change doesn’t happen by reading a blog post, buying new workout clothes, or thinking about talking to that cute stranger. Change happens in those brief moments when you know what to do, and against every emotion in your body, you do it. Change really does happen in an instant, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Indubitably Dubitable 