Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
- Leo Tolstoy
If you could travel back ten years into the past and meet your younger self, what would you tell them?
Time has a funny way of speeding up as we get older. When we’re young the years crawl like the infants we are, in terms of experience. They start picking up speed as we enter adolescence; time learns to walk. By our twenties, the years are taking long, manly (or womanly) strides into adulthood. We look back in vain at childhoods tinted with nostalgia; we see children shooting up like bean sprouts. They grow up so fast! We exclaim. And to our eyes, they do. It didn’t feel that way when we were young, though.
Time has a way of changing things.
There are some lessons you can only learn with perspective. Success comes from failure, wisdom from ignorance. You have to do the wrong thing – sometimes for years – before you can understand what’s right. Last year was all about epiphanies. I learned and grew a lot.
So far, this year seems to be about putting those lessons into practice. To quote Bruce Lee, knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. We all start out as children in life, innocent and unschooled, tripping up and making mistakes that will later define us. We’re all young and stupid sometimes – until we learn.
Today I’m talking about five ways to know you’re growing up.
1. Becoming self-aware.
I suppose the simplest way to define this is being aware of your own bullshit.
All right, all right. The less pithy definition is knowing who you are as a person. Not just your likes and dislikes, but your knee-jerk reactions and emotional tendencies. Self-awareness is the capacity to look at yourself from the outside, flaws and all. To examine yourself from all angles. Invoking David Foster Wallace, to recognize the currents and eddies and blackest depths in our minds and know that this is water.1
Easier said than done. Our upbringing, our environment, our egos; all of these contribute to the way we see ourselves. All of these blur the face in the mirror, forming a mask that doesn’t always match reality. There’s a reason so many coming-of-age stories talk about ‘finding ourselves’. It’s because figuring this stuff out doesn’t just happen. It takes experience and effort. Often to discover who we are, we must first figure out who we’re not.
2. Learning the patterns of the past.
The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again, but expecting different results. I guess we’re all crazy, then.
One of the most crucial forms of self-awareness is examining the patterns in our lives. What have we been doing over and over, forever disappointed with the results, yet still expecting different outcomes? What are we constantly making excuses for? What do we secretly desire, but never seriously attempt?
What are we afraid to change?
A couple months ago, I got off Instagram. It was getting too addictive. But then I started spending too much time in internet forums on Reddit. I cut down on that, only to spend hours reading articles on Quora. A couple weeks ago, a personal problem was bothering me. I had some time off work, so I read a 500-page novel in two days. Because I could.
Do you see the pattern yet?
Books, television, video games, the internet.2 I’ve always been someone who’s found solace in his own mind, in ideas and stories and fantasies. But this can be taken to extremes. Far too often, I dive into other worlds to escape my own. One of the great truths of life is that avoiding your problems is easier than facing them. In today’s world of likes, virtual playgrounds and constant connectivity, where avoidance is as easy as pulling out your phone, this is more important to recognize than ever.
Because while we’re caught up in the same patterns, it is frighteningly easy for life to pass us by. Without even realizing it, we cage ourselves in comfort. You don’t want to look back one day and see that the door was always open.
We just need to have the courage to step outside. The courage to tell yourself, no more.
3. Gaining self-discipline.
The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment is a famous study on self-control. Back in the 60s, researchers gave children a choice between eating a marshmallow now, or getting two after a certain period of time. They then observed as their subjects grew into adults. The findings were clear: children who could resist temptation got better grades, ate better, behaved better, and were generally more successful.3
This makes sense. Quitting an addiction; studying longer; working on that personal project you keep putting off. These require persistence and consistency. They require discipline.
Mine is lopsided, you might say. I do well at upholding external obligations. For the sake of others, I have discipline. But when it comes to myself, I fall short. And that’s a problem. Because I’ve slowly come to see the value of self-control.
Like Steve Jobs said, we can only do a few things in our lives. (Yeah, I’ve got quotes for everything.) We only have so much time. And the difference between wasting that time on pleasant distractions and working towards your goals isn’t inspiration, because you won’t always be inspired. It’s not motivation, because you definitely won’t always be motivated.
It’s discipline. Making the effort, over and over, even when you don’t feel like it. This stuff isn’t cool or sexy or what have you. It takes courage. It takes dedication. And most of all, it takes the ability to manage yourself effectively. That, more than anything else, is the difference between success and failure.
The idea here isn’t just to break unhealthy patterns, but to build better ones.
4. Acquiring healthier habits.
How hard is it for you to brush your teeth?
Do you need to talk yourself into it every night? Lecture yourself about the benefits of dental hygiene, along with horror stories about gum infections and rotted teeth?
Of course not. Who does that? If you’re anything like me, you brush your teeth and barely even think about it. You don’t need to think about it. It’s a habit.
Good habits are the patterns in our lives done right. (And vice versa.) Although we perceive everything we do as consciously controlled, the reality is that our brains conserve processing power for important decisions. Everything else runs on autopilot. And that’s important. We think new behaviours will require major effort. And they will, until they become normal. Then you’ll barely even think about them. Acquiring better habits will literally change your life.
But they’ll do it one step at a time.
A common flaw in our efforts is thinking that change must be all or nothing. If we fail once, or twice, even a dozen times, we’re doomed. This is absolutely false. Personal growth is a process. We take a step every day. Maybe we sometimes take one or two back. But we learn from our mistakes, and keep moving forwards. And one day, we’ll look back and be amazed at how far we’ve come.
We just have to want to change in the first place.
5. Understanding that change comes from within.
The last great truth I’ve realized is that you can’t force someone to change. People have different levels of perception, different forms of life experience. We can argue and advise all we want, but you can’t batter someone into believing. It doesn’t work like that. True growth comes from within.
You see, the key to change lies in the concept of identity. We subconsciously cling to whatever we feel is a part of ourselves. A part of who we are. This is why guilt- and punishment-based approaches are so ineffective. By driving home that we are guilty of something, we actually reinforce it, and ensure that whatever it is remains as part of our psyche. The key is to forgive ourselves, and move on.
If you want to quit smoking, you can’t think of yourself as struggling against the urge to smoke. You have to tell yourself that you don’t do that anymore. You have to tell yourself, I am not a smoker.
Because the work of becoming better is just that: work. It takes a thousand tiny choices, day after day, to let go of what holds you back. Sometimes we choose not to. We’re only human. We lie, we cheat, we take the easy way out. We think we can get away with it – until we learn otherwise.
So the best advice I can give is don’t change. Be like Peter Pan; stay young forever. Keep doing the same things, day in, day out, until they make you sick. Until you think, there must be a better way. Until you hit rock bottom. That’s where the true, innermost desire to change is born.
That’s when you start growing up.
***
If I could say one thing to my younger self, it would be to trust the journey. Appreciate where you are in life. You’ll screw up, make mistakes, go through all kinds of angst and pain and anxiety. There’ll be good times too, shining moments that will make it all worthwhile.
And someday you’ll be a little older, a little wiser. You’ll look back and know all of this brought you closer to the man, or woman, that you were always meant to be.
You just have to take it one day at a time.
1 I dedicated another post to this article alone. It’s an outstanding examination of self-awareness from an author who died too soon. If you haven’t already, go read it.
2 This is all on one device, remember. So convenient.
3 Interestingly, researchers at the University of Rochester later repeated the experiment, but with a twist. The researcher who gave out marshmallows acted either trustworthy or unreliable. The number of children who held out for the second marshmallow rose and fell accordingly. This suggests that it’s not a matter of nature, but of nurture. The reliability of a child’s experiences will help determine whether they have faith in future outcomes, or choose to seize what they can while they have the chance.
Crucially, it also means that self-discipline can be taught.
A common flaw in our efforts is thinking that change must be all or nothing. If we fail once, or twice, even a dozen times, we’re doomed. This is absolutely false. Personal growth is a process. We take a step every day. Maybe we sometimes take one or two back. But we learn from our mistakes, and keep moving forwards. And one day, we’ll look back and be amazed at how far we’ve come.
We just have to want to change in the first place.
5. Understanding that change comes from within.
The last great truth I’ve realized is that you can’t force someone to change. People have different levels of perception, different forms of life experience. We can argue and advise all we want, but you can’t batter someone into believing. It doesn’t work like that. True growth comes from within.
You see, the key to change lies in the concept of identity. We subconsciously cling to whatever we feel is a part of ourselves. A part of who we are. This is why guilt- and punishment-based approaches are so ineffective. By driving home that we are guilty of something, we actually reinforce it, and ensure that whatever it is remains as part of our psyche. The key is to forgive ourselves, and move on.
If you want to quit smoking, you can’t think of yourself as struggling against the urge to smoke. You have to tell yourself that you don’t do that anymore. You have to tell yourself, I am not a smoker.
Because the work of becoming better is just that: work. It takes a thousand tiny choices, day after day, to let go of what holds you back. Sometimes we choose not to. We’re only human. We lie, we cheat, we take the easy way out. We think we can get away with it – until we learn otherwise.
So the best advice I can give is don’t change. Be like Peter Pan; stay young forever. Keep doing the same things, day in, day out, until they make you sick. Until you think, there must be a better way. Until you hit rock bottom. That’s where the true, innermost desire to change is born.
That’s when you start growing up.
***
If I could say one thing to my younger self, it would be to trust the journey. Appreciate where you are in life. You’ll screw up, make mistakes, go through all kinds of angst and pain and anxiety. There’ll be good times too, shining moments that will make it all worthwhile.
And someday you’ll be a little older, a little wiser. You’ll look back and know all of this brought you closer to the man, or woman, that you were always meant to be.
You just have to take it one day at a time.
1 I dedicated another post to this article alone. It’s an outstanding examination of self-awareness from an author who died too soon. If you haven’t already, go read it.
2 This is all on one device, remember. So convenient.
3 Interestingly, researchers at the University of Rochester later repeated the experiment, but with a twist. The researcher who gave out marshmallows acted either trustworthy or unreliable. The number of children who held out for the second marshmallow rose and fell accordingly. This suggests that it’s not a matter of nature, but of nurture. The reliability of a child’s experiences will help determine whether they have faith in future outcomes, or choose to seize what they can while they have the chance.
Crucially, it also means that self-discipline can be taught.
