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Over the years, I’ve written a lot about change.1
I’ve even described my audience as “pro-change,” when asked to explain who reads my blog and comes to my events.
This explanation was always frustrating to book publicists and professional marketers, who assured me that the world exists in neat, demographically-packaged pockets.
“But my readers want to change the world!” I’d say.
“That’s not a target market,” I was told.
Fair enough. Perhaps we were both right in some ways.
And of course, not everything should be changed. But the point is: all things considered and generally speaking, change is good.
When you are stuck, you want to change. When you are frustrated, you want to change.
Either literally or figuratively (or both), you want to go from where you are now to someplace better—and this involves change.
Just think about a big change you’ve made during your life—do you ever wish you’d made it later?
Most likely, it's either the right time or it's overdue. Again, there’s probably some exception to the rule, but most of the time, you’ll feel better after making a change you’ve been pondering for a while.
For me —
I wish I’d gone to therapy sooner
I wish I’d learned more about ADHD sooner (also: attachment theory, codependency, family systems, radical acceptance, and more)
I wish I’d actively developed emotional intelligence instead of picking it up along the way
I wish I’d learned how to learn sooner (weird thing: most of us never study the practice of skill acquisition, which offers a huge return on investment. The better and faster you can learn, the more you can learn)
The list could go on and on.
In fact, almost every “regrets of the dying” article dwells on this concept in some way, usually in a formula of sorts: I wish I’d made/done [big life change] [more, sooner, earlier, etc.].2
Another thing: sometimes I've been afraid in advance of making a change—but almost always afterwards, I think, wow, I feel so relieved.