What is the Biggest Disappointment of All?
How People Change
People change when their lives become unbearable, when they recognize the need, or just because they want something different in their lives. People do not change because of other people, or any other reason. People change because they want to.
“Many patients go to psychiatrists as if to surgeons, and many psychiatrists regard themselves as psychic surgeons. When such a patient comes to such a therapists a relationship of considerable length may result, but little else. For the job can be done, if at all, only by the patient. To assign this task to anyone else, however insightful or charismatic, is to disavow the source of change.” Allen Wheels
We must make the changes we require ourselves if we are to have the life we desire. No one can do this for us. It is completely our responsibility to change.
“We are wise to believe is difficult to change, to recognize that character has forward propulsion which tends to carry it unaltered into the future, but we need not believe it impossible to change. Our present and future choices may take us upon different courses which will in time comprise a different identity.”
It is when people encounter the difficulty associated with change that many decide to remain in their comfort zone no matter how uncomfortable. Change is inevitable and if you do not change on some level throughout your life you will remain whenever you stopped growing. It is just that simple.
Insight is great, but insight alone will not bring about change. Some people are content to know the root of a problem, but not change it. You the kind, the person with lung cancer, but refuses to quit smoking, or the person who is overweight, but swears they don’t eat much. These people have developed habits that have caused them to seek answers, but when confronted with the reality no one can really help them, but then they punk out on themselves.
The greatest disappointment in life is when we let ourselves down. When we finally have to face we are not who we thought we were, or that we are not willing to be more than we discover we are. Nothing hurts more than to know you are not willing to do what is needing to give yourself what you need to be who you are.
People change when they can no longer bear not to.
