Staying Open to Change
How change opened my mind and saved my life
I started doing positive affirmations about a month ago. Positive affirmations are an interesting concept — essentially how it works is that you say a phrase to yourself every day (or multiple times a day) focused on some key idea, and by repeating this phrase you can gradually influence the way that your brain is wired to manifest this idea in your life.
This concept makes sense to me because I see the value in repetition every day. For example, I have a kiddo who is trying to memorize math facts — multiplication and division through twelve. By having these memorized, she will be able to quickly work through more complex math equations by having to focus less on the multiplying and dividing part of it — she’ll just know the answers because they’ll be like second nature for her. She made a giant stack of flash cards and we ran through them every night until she could tell me what 11 times 12 was without thinking about it (its 132, by the way).
Positive affirmations work in basically the same way — you repeat a phrase like “I am worthy of love and joy” until the idea that you are worthy of love and joy is ingrained in you so deeply that it becomes a fact. It becomes second nature to believe it.
Sounds like I’m all in on positive affirmations, right? Well, I wasn’t always.
Resistance at all cost is the most senseless act there is. / Friedrich Durrenmatt
I am, in fact, a cynic in the process of reformation. And as a lifelong cynic, I’ve always given positive affirmations a long, skeptical side-eye.
In my head, I’d imagined some starry-eyed ingénue looking in the mirror, ruffles and perfect ponytail in place, psyching herself up to have another awesome day. A stereotyping trope? Absolutely. And I used this trope to firmly push positive affirmations into the arena of things that might be right for someone else, but not for me.
Positive affirmations are one of many things that I’d previously dismissed as “not for me” that have ended up being important tools on my road to wellness these last few years…tools that have literally changed the foundation of how I live my life.
So if they’re so vital to my life now, how could I have so easily dismiss them before?
Because “not for me” became a shield for me to dismiss things that might make me feel silly and give me hope that I didn’t feel I deserved.
“Not for me” allowed me to preemptively exclude myself so that I could affirm my feelings of being apart from everyone else.
“Not for me” prevented me from being vulnerable and taking help that was being offered…because I wasn’t used to help being offered, and help being offered felt unsafe.
“Not for me” kept me comfortably struggling, undeserving, alone, and closed off from everyone around me. It subtly reinforced my own beliefs about myself and about the world — the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy. Why try something new and let the world push me down when I could just stay down and avoid the hassle?
And so I stayed down.
I stayed down for years.
I stayed down until staying down became so uncomfortable that it was no longer an option, and I was forced to take a good, hard look at my life and reevaluate all those ideas I’d discarded as being “not for me.” Because clearly what I thought was for me wasn’t working.
Nothing happens unless something is moved. / Albert Einstein
Change is hard.
And the most difficult part about change is getting the ball rolling.
It reminds me of Newton’s first law of motion: “A body at rest will remain at rest, and a body in motion will remain in motion unless it is acted upon by an external force.”
It seems this concept can also be extended to the mind — when we are comfortably nestled in our habits and routines, a good amount of external mental force is needed to bring about change. Our brains are hardwired to avoid change at any cost, which is why it can be so difficult to break bad habits and why it takes a good amount of consistent, repeated effort to establish good ones.
It’s also why it sometimes feels like change only comes as a method of last resort.
Anyone who’s tried to quit smoking or start an exercise program or start eating healthier is all too aware of this wonderful little brain quirk. It’s only after we’ve thrown all our ammunition and defense mechanisms at something and we’re faced with cold, stark reality that change becomes a lesser evil than staying the same.
It’s at this point that some people choose to dip their toes and gradually wade into change. Some people numb themselves or ignore the need to change. And some people squinch their eyes and cannonball into it ass first.
People don’t resist change. They resist being changed. / Peter Senge
I’d love to say that when the need to change came about, I grabbed it with both hands and embraced it wholeheartedly.
That is not what happened.
When I was told I had hypothyroidism, I did some light research and found that in almost all cases, it’s caused by an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. A few searches later and I firmly closed my laptop. I didn’t like what I read and decided right there that I wouldn’t have Hashimoto’s.
Like it was something I could choose.
Pants or skirt, chicken or steak…Hashimoto’s or regular hypothyroidism.
What followed were four years of progressively deteriorating health, panic attacks, and visits to the emergency room. Doctors were at a loss and I floundered, my brain foggy, my body in disrepair, with more questions than answers.
The external force that nudged me forward was a watch that tracked my heart rate and told me I wasn’t crazy. It was the right amount of inertia to get me to schedule a visit with a doctor who knew enough to test me for Hashimoto’s.
When I got the test results that showed I definitely had the thing I’d been so convinced I couldn’t have, there was no going back. For some reason, that was the match that lit the fire inside of me. That was the day I went all in.
The good news about change, I found, is that once you start changing, it’s easier to keep changing.
Since that day, I’ve read everything I could about my physical and mental health and took control of it, advocating my way through professionals to get the help that I needed, finally. And ended up finding myself again along the way.
It’s three years later. I’ve completely changed my diet to paleo and take supplements. I eat organic and use non-toxic and sustainable products. I meditate and walk almost every day. I run on the weekends. I journal. I’m in therapy.
I’m also now in remission from Hashimoto’s.
I cured my adrenal fatigue.
I eliminated most of the systemic inflammation in my body and lost 50 pounds in the process.
I’m working on healing my leaky gut and now have less severe food sensitivities, some of which are completely gone.
I left my job in a toxic, abusive workplace.
I have a healthy support system for the first time in my life.
I’m addressing the childhood traumas that are at the root of my health issues.
And as of a month ago, I do positive affirmations. Turns out they’re for me after all.
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. / Rumi
I am still a work in progress and there is a lot of work left to do. But I can’t discount how far I’ve come in such a short time. I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t opened myself up to change, and stayed open to it.
Change is hard, and it’s messy. Some days are better than others.
But change is also magic, and it’s physics. Change saved my life.
It made me realize that I’m a badass and a survivor, and I’m worthy of joy and love.
And it’s about time that I believed it.
