If I had a nickel for every time a client came into my office and said “I want to change” I’d be a rich woman. Most people who call for counseling want to change something in their lives, and some want to change many things. Sometimes they don’t want to change anything, and sometimes they want to change everything. All of these scenarios give us something to talk about—for awhile. The problem occurs when we start to sort out just what it is that the person really wants to change and find out that . . lo and behold . . . it’s someone else. More often than not, it’s Him that needs to change. Or Her. Or Them. People often abort the counseling process when they begin to realize that the only person that I can really change, no matter how hard I try, or how creative I become, is...me. Ugh!!

This is why change is so hard. We can talk about it, think about it, plan for it, and even take a few stabs at it, but genuinely changing ourselves, from the inside out, takes work. Inner work. Uncomfortable work. Awful work. Hard work. Work. Change starts with a single decision. This decision occurs at the moment when the pain of not changing becomes worse than the pain involved in changing. When we know inside that we can’t stand staying the same for another second. Suddenly, we know that we have to do something. After we have exhausted every avenue in trying to get someone or something else to change so that we will feel more comfortable, more loved, more valued, more safe, less scared, less lonely, less anxious, or whatever we are feeling, then, and only then, are we ready to change.

Ironically, when we finally decide to change the one thing in life that we actually have control over, which is ourselves, —situations and people around us often begin to change. We can change our thoughts about a situation, our expectations, our feelings, where we place our energies, our bad habits (blaming, arguing, finger-pointing, rescuing, enabling), how we decide to interpret situations, our responses, when to speak up, when to just listen, how we spend our free time, our priorities and our friends, to name a few. As we begin to change our way of interacting with the world, we find that gradually, changes occur around us, naturally. It is when we try to force someone else to change by giving ultimatums or withholding love, acceptance, or friendship that we get stuck.

Making changes in our attitudes, our approach to life and how we handle situations requires us to stop again and again, and think about how we want to respond or act. So often our responses to life are automatic reactions to something someone else says or does. When we stop and decide how we will respond, or if we will respond, we become responsible for creating a different outcome than what we are used to. If we behave in ways that lead to different outcomes repeatedly, we wake up one day and realize that our world has changed. Situations have changes. We have changed.

If you have reached a readiness for change in your life and would like some help in getting started, call Robin Shultz, LCSW, CADC, CTRS at 630-544-3324 X 16.