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If you were to stop and ask 10 people on the street if they fear change, how many do you think would say “Yes! I hate change, not for me, no thanks!”? I would wager there might be one or two, and probably another who would say something along the lines of “it depends on what’s changing” with a nervous laugh. 

By and large though, most would claim that they’re a-ok with change and spout off some quote á la “change is the only constant in life”. 

The sheer amount of self-help, self-improvement, manifestation, positive psychology, and life coaching books/journals and media content would suggest that we humans do in fact love change. Any alien that wandered into a Barnes and Noble or opened the YouTube app would easily conclude that earth’s resident homo sapiens have a deep desire to transform themselves and their lives. 

We love the promise of change so much that it’s a booming industry yet, so few of us actually transform. Why? 

Short answer: Because we think transformation means becoming more of who we aren’t, not more of who we already ARE. 

Let’s unpack this shall we…

We Say We Want Change…But Do We?

Between my experience in corporate as a VP leading huge teams and as a coach and consultant, I’ve been privy to a lot of human behavior over the past two decades. And let me tell you, it is astonishing how many companies and people claim they want to transform their business and/or themselves, but when confronted with ways to actually make that transformation happen, they balk. 

The second company I worked for was a gold-star example of this. They were a mortgage and financial company who possessed the proverbial champagne taste with a beer budget mindset. Additionally, they had this affinity for adding new offshoots to their business, despite those additions not making much sense. 

They wanted a robust technology platform, but did not want to pay for the software and experienced talent to oversee it. 

They wanted to add self-service loans to their website but, well, see the point above. Hard to do that when you don’t want to upgrade your IT department. 

And here’s the thing that should have been obvious to them, but wasn’t: they were not made to be a technology-forward company. They were much more skilled as a boutique lender that specialized in clients and properties that fell outside of the typical scope of mortgage loans. 

Instead of doubling down on being a specialized lender for unique situations and letting that be the next level of their transformation, they chased the changes the other, bigger players in the industry were making. 

On some level, I think they knew they weren’t built for the path they were trying to take. But, like so many of us, they had been conditioned to believe that real transformation meant abandoning what made them unique in order to be more like everyone else. And that cost them pretty much their entire business (from what I can tell online things are…un-good). 

We Were Sold A False Bill of Goods (and We Refuse to Admit It) 

It’s often been said that the human ego hates to be wrong. I agree with this and would add,  “especially if it’s been sold a lie”. 

The lie we’ve been sold since birth is that we’re not enough. That we’re somehow wrong if we’re not inclined to do things the way others do them.

That the ways we naturally want to be simply will not support us in life. That if we want to “make it” we have to twist and contort ourselves to fit inside these lovely boxes society has deemed acceptable. Don’t want to shove yourself in this too small box? Then prepare to be an unsuccessful, unlovable, and impoverished human who is the scourge of the family. 

Not a pretty option, so we proceed to suppress and repress ourselves until we fit into the box we’ve selected. 

Then, when we get tired of that box (as is inevitable since we do not fit in it) we decide we’re going to change. But somewhere deep in the recesses of our minds is the idea that change means going from this box to another one. And that new box looks even smaller. It looks like we’ll have to pretend to be even more of who we are not in order to fit inside and get the “next level goals” it contains. 

So instead, we convince ourselves that our current box is just fine thankyouverymuch. Sure, we might be low-key miserable but at least we know what to expect. 

What we’re ignoring here is that our next level isn’t found in a new box, it’s found outside of it. That we ourselves can take ourselves out of the box and build our damn container with all the room we need to let ourselves BE ourselves.

But this can be very very difficult to admit. We cling to the stories of people who abandoned their society-approved box and failed as proof of why it’s safer to be low-key miserable. 

Yet, we also love to consume the stories of those that left their box, created their own box-free path, and saw their lives blossom and thrive in ways our souls are dying to experience. 

It’s such a mindf*ck. 

The Key To True Transformation

The most important thing you can ever learn in this lifetime is that you are enough. You were born enough and you will always be enough. Your way of being is simply one of many possible ways of being that will absolutely work in the world, society-approved boxes be damned. 

Changing yourself and your life isn’t about becoming something you are not. It’s not about adding more make-up or filters to camouflage who you are into something more appealing. It’s not about squeezing even more of yourself in on yourself like a supermassive black hole to the point your natural god-given light cannot escape. 

It’s allowing yourself to double down on who you are underneath the camo job. It’s admitting you, like everyone else, were sold a false bill of goods that you believed to be true. It’s allowing yourself to be the supernova explosion of light and being that you are. 

Transformation isn’t actually about changing yourself, it’s the process of remembering and reclaiming the parts of you that were labeled “not good enough” and letting them out to play.

Hugs,

Elena

P.S. If you’re ready to “unbox” yourself, my 6 Week Reset is a great way to start.