Into the wild.
We all have a clear definition in our minds of what change is and should look like. And taht vision affects what we choose to do and not to do. The higher the hurdle, the harder to take a step in the name of change. And most probably, the way we view it is truly different from one another. I think I have had a quite romanticized and impossible view of change. The one that makes what previously was, almost unrecognizable versus where you end up. One of my all-time favorite movies captures my previous paradigm of change quite accurately.
The movie is Into the wild from 2007, directed by Sean Penn. It is based on the true story of Christopher McCandless, a young adventurer that travelled around the States discovering the wilderness during a couple of years. I would love to summarize it here, but for the ones of you that might not have seen it and want to see it, I will not spoil the story-line nor the end (I strongly encourage you to check it out – it is really good, if you are into this sort of genre). I will just say that the visionary life-change that Christopher makes, that knows no physical boundaries, is one that fascinates and inspires.
My entire life, I have seen true change to look like what Christopher’s journey looked like (minus the end). When you leave the physical life as you know it and transform it into something completely different. When the vision in your mind has no commonalities with the life you are currently leading and the only way to go is to sell your house and car and move to Bali and open a bed & breakfast. Or something else as radical as that. A seeminly hard change that makes the most of us dreamers only treat is as such, a dream that is there for us to think about a bit extra on grey rainy days. I still love that idea of a 100% emotional and physical paradigm shift. But I also see a completely different pallet than I did some time ago.
In the journey I have embarked, I have become increasingly curious about the seemingly smaller changes, for instance, the inner changes that can occur, while all else stays the same. How these inner changes can affect the way an entire life is perceived. It is quite powerful to realize how much power you have to change your entire world only by reflection that leads you to perceive things differently. It could be that you start taking things less seriously than you did before, and the effect that directly has on how you perceive everything that you do. A book I really recommend if you are curious if individualized change that will look very different from person to person, is “Seven habits of highly effective people.” The title sounds much more corporate and square than the content actually is. What it has that the vast majority of books within the genre of personal development do not have, is that it really starts off from you as the starting point, always taking into consideration the personal journey you need to make that is not comparable to the journey of anyone else. No one is enforcing their views onto you, that is a job you need to do yourself.
No matter where I end up, I will always have that little dream of moving to Cusco in Peru, opening a little restaurant and living life side-by-side with the . But if it is a dream I want to live out or a dream I want to land in at times only in my mind, I do not know just yet.
Questions for you:
How do you see change?
Have you had a change you have dreamt about for a long time? Is it physical or mental?