The Slow Alchemy Of Change

Quick-fix videos make it seem like once you know how, you’ve got it. Real change doesn’t work that way.**

That’s just the very first tip of the iceberg.

Because you will walk around for quite some time knowing these things — doing them a little, or maybe not at all — but just knowing they’re there.

Sometimes you’ll think you’ve got it all together just because you know, and other times you’ll look around and say, *I don’t have it all together. Why don’t I do these things?*

It’s not about knowing.

It’s not about beating yourself up for not doing it.

It’s about learning to accept who you are — faults and strengths all at once.

Our culture teaches the belief that not doing things you’ve learned is just “laziness.”

It’s not that way.

When your internal state begins to shift because you’ve put forth the effort to see through your own actions, your own beliefs, and even your own thoughts, that’s when your internal state changes.

It doesn’t happen because you learned some things online, or you read a few books, or you listened to a few podcasts.

It takes the internal work of watching yourself.

Watching your reactions to things.

Watching your actions and inactions.

And instead of condemning yourself with someone else’s admonitions, choosing to give yourself space and room to grow…

And that means to stop judging yourself.

When you get there, you’ll know that the things you’ve learned are not absolutes that have to be done every single time.

Instead, they are guideposts for you to learn your own way of doing things — even if you only use parts of what you’ve learned.

My old kung fu teacher used to tell us that when you continue to practice what I’ve taught you here, over the course of years, and I see you again, and I ask you what it was that I taught you, I will know that you have truly mastered it if it looks nothing like what I taught you.

I get what he’s talking about now.

Of course I didn’t back then.

I wanted to believe that I did, but I didn’t.

So take those things you learn and make them your own, because memorization isn’t going to do for you what internalization will.

Stop judging yourself.

Practice patience with yourself.

And honor all your teachers, even the ones who challenged you the most.

Give them — and their humanity — the same patience and non-judgment that you give to yourself.

Focus on this with everyone.

They are all instrumental in you becoming your true, blossomed self.

~Janice M. Burke

Image by Bankim Desai from Unsplash