5 Principles of Change for a better life
5 Principles of Change for a better life
Avthar’s Weekly Newsletter #15 (8/9/2020)
Welcome to edition #15 of Avthar’s Weekly Email.
This is where I share practical wisdom about startups, learning, health and happiness, all to help you level up your own life.
What’s in this week’s newsletter?
This week’s topic is Change. I want to share 5 of the best things I’ve learned about change and how it relates to self development, building habits and living a peaceful life.
Hit the comment button at the end of this post to let me know what spoke to you!
1. Change is always happening
We often think of ideal situations as everlasting and unchanging. But life doesn’t work like that. Change is a constant in life. The world is in a constant state of flux, no two moments are the same. This is both terrifying and liberating.
In order to live a peaceful and impactful life, we must be grounded about the ever-changing nature of life and constantly remind ourselves of it. Take for example, how Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome, reminded himself of this fact in his journal:
We often resist change because we mistakenly believe that it isn’t supposed to happen.
We’ve all experienced this feeling whether it’s from losing a family member, suffering setbacks in business, or a breakup from a romantic relationship.
Marcus Aurelius reminds us that if we recognize that change is happening all around us in nature, we become less affected by unexpected changes in our own lives.
We learn to accept change and treat it as a natural process of the world.
The more we accept that change is always happening, the more we see the moment in front of us as an ideal moment, rather than as a stepping stone to some future happiness. In the words of buddhist nun Pema Chodron, we realize that “the off-center, in between state” is actually “an ideal situation”:
Pema Chodron’s words remind us to have gratitude for every moment in life and accept whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. We often fall into a mindset of “When I get [insert your desire here], then I’ll be happy”. The moment when all our desires are fulfilled might arrive, but it certainly won’t be around forever.
We must accept change. Life isn’t about reaching stasis - it ebbs and flows like a river. We must learn to flow with life’s changes rather than resist the inevitable current. Accepting change as an inevitable part of life can help us become our best selves.
Key Takeaway: Change is a rule of life. Accept it.
2. Make Change work for you
If change is a rule of life, is it possible to make change work to our advantage?
I think the answer is yes. Here’s why:
If change always occurring, then that also means that nothing ever stays the same -- It’s either improving or declining.
Therefore, by choosing to focus on improving a small bit everyday, we set ourselves up for lasting positive change in the long run. Put simply, getting 1% better everyday is all that’s needed for long term success.
Tiny changes compound to create massive gains. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, calls this The power of Tiny Gains. It’s illustrated in this graph, showing the difference between improving and declining by 1% everyday:
Every action you take is either a positive force to push you forward or a negative force to push you away from your goals. There is no staying the same.
Another way to think about making change work for you comes from Josh Waitzkin, polymath extraordinaire, who believes that if you're not cultivating quality (improving), you're essentially cultivating sloppiness (declining)”.
“If you're not cultivating quality (improving), you're essentially cultivating sloppiness (declining)”
- Josh Waitzkin
Josh tells a story about how we must be mindful of cultivating quality, even in the small, seemingly unimportant moments of our lives:
“I remember when I went skiing with Billy Kidd who is one of the great downhill racers from back in the '60s Olympic ski team. He's an awesome dude. Now he skis out in Colorado wearing a cowboy hat, just a timeless guy, brilliant dude. And he was saying to me years ago when I first skied with him, ‘Josh, what do you think are the three most important turns of the ski run?’
Billy describes the three most important turns of a ski run are the last three before you got in the lift and it's a very, very subtle point
For those of you who are skiers, that's when the slope is leveled off, there's less challenge. Most people are very sloppy. Then they're taking away a lot of the muscle they've been using.
They have bad form. The problem is that on the lift ride up unconsciously you're internalizing bad body mechanics. As Billy points out, if your last three turns are precise, then what you're internalizing on the lift ride up is precision.”
In this story, Josh reminds us to make change work for us by focusing on constant improvement and cultivating quality in all that we do, in big moments or small.
Key Takeaway: Improve or decline. Your choice.
3. Change and Identity
“In order to do something you’ve never done you must become a person you’ve never been”
- Les Brown
Les Brown’s fascinating quote about change and identity tells us that in order to make positive change, we can’t continue being the same person we were in the past.
We can’t be healthy while staying the same person who sleeps too little and eats junk food.
We can’t start a business while staying the same person who doesn’t want to work hard and is afraid of failure.
We can’t have good relationships while staying the same person whos afraid of commitment and has poor communication skills.
In order to get better results in life, we must become better people.
This principle applies to all areas of life. In his famous tweetstorm on “How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky”, investor and entrepreneur Naval Ravikant says that:
“A lot of people think making money is about luck. It’s not.
It’s about becoming the kind of person that makes money.”
Naval says that, in order to become rich, you must become a person who creates products, businesses or opportunities. As a by product you will get paid by society, create wealth and become rich. It all starts with developing yourself into a person deserving of what you want.
The same principle applies to any goal you have: Getting fit, a happy marriage, a thriving career.
Key Takeaway: To change your life for the better, you must become a better person
4. Change and Perspective
“When I change my mind, my world changes”
- Kamal Ravikant, Live Your Truth
Our thoughts are the dye we soak our minds in, they color how we relate to change. Constant change presents us with a constant opportunity to either dwell on the past or focus on what we can do to improve right now.
It’s not the events that occur, but our perspective on them, which will determine whether we thrive or wither in the face of change.
This principle is echoed by many of the world’s top performers. Take for example World Champion mixed martial arts coach Firas Zahabi, who’s definition of mental toughness has less to do with never giving up or outlasting your opponent, and more to do with having a mindset to handle life’s changes:
“Mental toughness is choosing to see the good in all situations, even when something catastrophic happens.”
- Firas Zahabi
Firas also goes on to elaborate:
If you become someone who sees the positive in everything, you become very difficult to beat. Because no matter how hard life hits you and how low you drop, you still believe that you can reach the top.
However, if you become someone who sees the negative in everything, you’re easy to beat. In fact, you’ve already beaten yourself. You will be brittle and break at the first challenge.
We must choose to be mentally tough when facing change. Choosing to see the good in all situations helps us keep focused on improving our lives and ensures we don’t slip into a downward spiral of negativity.
The power of being mentally tough, as Firas Zahabi puts it, is echoed by another iconic person, Marcus Aurelius, who says:
Maruc Aurelius reminds us that no matter how good or bad a situation might be, we can change our experience of it, simply by changing our thoughts.
The last quote on this theme of Change and Perception comes from entrepreneur Kamal Ravikant:
Kamal reminds us that while we can’t control the outside world, we always have power over our internal world.
We can always change our perception, our actions and as a result, change the person we are.
Key takeaway: Change your mind. Change your life.
5. How to make time to change your life
So many of us want to change: whether it's building healthy habits, making time to read and learn, or just spending less time doing things we know we shouldn’t be doing.
But change doesn’t happen by accident. Change requires consistency. And consistency takes time. So where can we find the time to change our lives?
Derek Sivers, entrepreneur and author, has a wonderful answer to this question:
“It takes many hours to make what you want to make.
The hours don’t suddenly appear.
You have to steal them from comfort.
Whatever you were doing before was comfortable. This is not. This will be really uncomfortable.”
- Derek Sivers
Derek Sivers reminds us that changing your life for the better requires discomfort, at least in the short term. The comfort we enjoy by not changing our life for the better is fleeting, it gets replaced by discomfort in the long run.
Take the example of eating healthily: If we eat sugary food or snacks that make us feel good now, in the long run, the same food will lead to sickness and disease. Discomfort in the short term, by being disciplined with our nutrition and exercise, actually leads to a more comfortable life in the long term, in this case, a life without disease.
We must steal time from comfort in order to consistently develop our new habits. That’s how we change our lives for the better.
Keep these questions in mind next time you’re reflecting on why your life isn’t the way you want it to be:
Where are you is short term comfort setting you up for long term discomfort?
Where can you use short term discomfort to create long term comfort?
Where can you steal time from comfort and reallocate that to consistently hit your goals?
Key takeaway: To change, you must steal time from comfort.
What’s next?
The principles above draw on a number of works by great people. Here’s some resources to explore for your reference:
The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
Live Your Truth by Kamal Ravikant
Learning, Philosophy and High Performance: The Ultimate Guide to Josh Waitzkin
Where to Find the Hours To Make it Happen by Derek Sivers
Making Money Isn’t About Luck by Naval Ravikant
Firas Zahabi Interview with Tom Bilyue
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Les Brown Motivational Video
Let me know in the comments what resonated with you the most or reach out on Twitter (@avthars)
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The concepts of acceptance and resistance to change are valuable ones. Sometimes when things don't seem to be changing quickly, we just need to look with more open eyes. Once while looking at a snow-covered forest floor one March, I noticed that underneath this still and seemingly unchanging snowy scene, the snow was melting. I could see green plants growing out of the warming earth pushing up toward the sun. It reminded me that in the still and fallow times, change and new growth is happening and have faith that some times we can't force change but trust that we've put things in place for it to happen, to grow.