Do you need everyone around you to cheer you on & support you on your journey toward behavior change?
Do you need everyone around you to support you and to cheery you on your journey toward Mastery?
Not everyone will be wildly enthusiastic about your choice to pursue mastery in your topic. People — friends, acquaintances, even family — like you just where you are right now. Some will not desire to see you change. This can be hard to take for some strivers. They feel that most everyone ought to be out there, cheering them on.
Only they don’t.
They don’t because they’ve got their own stuff they’re working on. They’ve got their own lives they’re leading. They’ve got their own goals they’re striving for. Note that just because they’re not actively cheering you on, they’re also not pooh-poohing you, either. In fact, most people will simply be so wound up in their own lives and stuff that they will barely even notice you. It might be a harsh truth, but it is true: most people will simply ignore you.
But never mind them. You are doing this for yourself and perhaps those closest to you. You’re doing this for what you want. You’re doing this for where you want to be. You’re doing this for who you want to become. You took the time to look into the future, pick the destination that is right for you, and then go for it. Even the people closest to you may not support you. Be OK with that. In fact, you have to be OK with that because it happens more often than you think. In an ironic twist, the people closest to you really do not want to see you change.
Though some of those closest to you will not want to see you change, some will support you in your new endeavor. They will cheer you on. They will open doors for you. Especially if you find someone to go on the journey with you. They may be slightly hard to find, but they’re out there. When you do find them, you likely have a friend for life. Nothing builds rapport and relationships faster than friendly competition and striving together.
Going on a shared journey of change for the better is a transformative experience. You’re meeting new people while leaving some behind. You’re gaining new experiences in a direction you haven’t gone in before. It’s exciting. It’s exciting because you’re not the same person that you were. You’re heading in new directions. You’re meeting new, upgraded people. You’re leaving behind old, bad habits and engaging in building new, positive ones. Sure, you have some adversity in your endeavor, but don’t you always when you start something new? The excitement and engagement of the new ought to outweigh the mental and emotional difficulty of building positive habits. After all, you’re doing this for you — your future, your family, your health, your profession, your personal OS upgrade.
Take drinking cessation. Take cutting alcohol out of your life entirely. Like stopping smoking, the act of quitting drinking is difficult to stick with. It’s ironic, but it is hard for us to quit doing something that really has no discernible benefits whatsoever for our health or wealth. One could argue that alcohol is a catalyst toward relationship-building.
Like Drug use, Drinking is a social value. People don’t like to do drugs alone, and people don’t like to drink alone. There’s a social stigma attached to being a single drinker, drinking alone. When it appears that the people around you are always drinking, always going to the bar, always watching the game with food and beer in their hands, this is a component of what your community values.
Drinking as a community value.
University of Iowa fans are notorious to start drinking at 6 AM on college football Saturdays in the fall. Yes, every college football Saturday is St. Patrick’s Day for these guys. You can imagine the shape they’re in by 11 AM. Their wild behavior is compounded by the fact that, well, they’re not very good. Whether they win or lose, they’re drinking before, during and after the game. I state this not to judge their fans or any other teams’ fans; I state this as one example of drinking as a community value. Once it appears that “everybody’s doing it,” the bad habit makes it that much harder to break due to social pressure and expectation. Yet all it takes is one person to turn the tide.
A keen eye for detail will find that one person who isn’t drinking at a crowded tailgate. They’re laughing, having fun, cooking food, grilling, and poking fun at others. They appear to be having as much fun as those on the drinking Blitzkrieg, only they’re strikingly sober. They stick out and yet they blend in. They’re chameleon-like characters at the tailgate. They’re doing what they want only they’re doing it on their terms. Everyone else seems to be doing it on others’ terms. They’re in control.
Many people have their stories of getting sober. They are stories of hardship. They are stories of difficulty. They are stories of eradicating previously poor behavior. They are funny stories. They are stories that are tough to hear. They are surprisingly similar stories. They are human stories.
Some people simply make up their minds to quit drinking, state it aloud or to themselves, and then hold the line forward. Some people need three iterations of recovery before they finally are able to take hold and move forward. Some people see the logic in not drinking (i.e. no discernible benefits to them at all), and simply decide to make health #1 and live it physically, emotionally and mentally. Whatever the path, people decide and change their behavior for the better. Like any new habit, it isn’t easy to cease drinking at first. The first week, especially, is difficult. But once you’re through the first seven days, it gets much easier thereafter. After that, everything gets better.
People may not be excited for the new you.
Once the new habit starts to stick, you will discover that your friends who drink may not be excited about this new, sober you. In fact, some may be hostile toward you and your habit change. This is an aspect of the new habit’s difficulty that few discuss. Your friends and family — those closest to you — may not like your positive change.
Don’t worry: they’ll let you know. They’ll say things like, “Who do you think you are?!“ They’ll call you names. They’ll question your decision because it flies in the face of theirs. Some will feel threatened by it because they see your behavior change as an affront to what they’ve been doing for years. You have just stopped a behavior they’ve been doing for a really long time. When someone close to us does this, we feel weirdly intimidated or at least wrong for doing what we’ve been doing. We feel incongruent, and we don’t like to feel incongruent. Someone close to us made a decision to get better, and here we are, maintaining the status quo, drinking. Some of us at 6 AM on college football Saturdays.
We will do more for others than we’ll do for ourselves, even if we end up being one of the beneficiaries. This is why some nondrinkers pick their kids as their reason for quitting the drink. If we can’t do it for us, we will be strong enough to do it for others. We’ll find the strength. We come to realize that we are stronger than we think, that we’ve been through similar things like this before, and we’ve prevailed. This time is no different.
