A long journey always begins with a small step
‘If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living’.
- Gail Sheehy
If you are reading this, then you are already going through change in life, whether you realize it or not. And why should it not change? Imagine how boring our life would be if we stayed and lived as a single unit of constant for the rest of our life, if nothing ever changed, if we were locked inside one single state and never moved forward.
When was last time you heard someone say that their dream was to follow the system created by society? I’m an Indian and so I was told from a very young age by the people around me that there were only three things important in life - to study, to get a job and to marry and settle down. And it honestly surprises me to see how many people live their life just like that and are also somehow content with it? That is something beyond my comprehension!
For as long as I can remember, I wanted to live a life of change — of learning, growing, having newer and newer experiences and meeting more and more interesting people. As a kid, when in class, I would daydream about traveling, going on adventures and meeting different people. But also from a very young age, my problem has been that I have always felt stuck. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, between being comfortable and uncomfortable with change.
Last year, I quit my job. The daily routine of my life up until that point was suffocating me. I was stuck in the corporate machine, copying and pasting, at the bottom of the ladder. I was stagnant. I was stationary. A single immobile unit of constant in this Universe, living a repetitive mundane cyclical lifestyle. A rusted cog in a lifeless machine, nothing more.
But I couldn’t stay that way. It was against the core of my being to live life without any meaning. I always wondered about things that I would do in my life, but in reality never did. This was the breaking point for me. There was nothing special about that day, but deep inside of me, there was a birth of a very low and silent voice, that simply murmured to me “change” and I heard it. It was distant, but it spoke to me directly. As the days passed by, the voice grew stronger and stronger, until the day I finally reached out to it as a life jacket, to rescue me from drowning into meaninglessness. It took a lot of energy from me to start over with my life, but I had to.
Today, I can say that I am grateful that I listened to that voice inside of me, because I am not a rusted cog in the big giant lifeless corporate machine anymore. I am discovering me. I am discovering my soul. Who am I? I am a unit of change.
Taking the first step is arduous. It’s always difficult, for anyone. The Universe is a magical place, where you can apply the law of inertia to lifeless objects and life itself. Something still, stays still, until acted upon by force. And something in motion, always stays in motion, unless brought to rest.
Change is difficult. You are fighting against your own self in that moment, to invent a new you. It brings feelings into our minds that we have not felt before and it takes time to adjust to it. But in those moments, you will notice something is different. It could be you, your environment or the situation. When you find that moment, you need to pause and look at it. It could be something really small, but it holds a lot of value.
‘No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress is, you are still way ahead of everyone who isn’t trying.’
- Tony Robbins
It is only when you notice those small changes that you start believing in the notion of change. It can be hard to notice at first, but when you do, appreciate those tiny little changes, they are a unit of your progress, to discovering and investing a new you. A long journey always begins with a small step.
There are things that we all want to do in our life but we also have resistance towards doing it. Its our battle to fight against that resistance, against ourselves. I have been part of this battle myself, and I came out of it as a champion. A warrior. But this is only a single win, there are many more battles to come, and with every win, you will grow stronger. This is your war, and only you can win it.
Fight your battles and make the change, cause life is too beautiful to be boring.
