Newsflash: Change is hard.

OK, now that you’ve picked your jaw up from the floor at that astonishing revelation, let me elaborate.

Having change thrust upon us is hard, of course. If somebody takes your job away from you, for example, there will be much anger and grieving and so on. Changes in circumstances can seem quite hard, leading to all sorts of thoughts and feelings. It can take time and effort to adapt to the new normal.

The hardest kind of change, though, is the kind you are trying to create internally. Nobody is forcing it upon you – it’s just you. You can always just leave it and go read Facebook instead, if you so desire. You can procrastinate. You can find a million and one excuses not to change. Yet, you know you must.

You can talk with your friends and go round and round in circles, explaining exactly why you can’t make the change that you want. They’ve probably heard all your excuses before, so they nod sympathetically and tune you out. The work is yours alone.

You can whine to your therapist or coach about all the stories you’ve made up for yourself, all the fears and hangups and things that happened when you were three or twenty-three. Those may very well all be true, but why are they relevant to whom you are right now?

Or … you can make a decision. Not beat yourself up about all the time that you wasted going in circles – clearly that was necessary. But one day, you can wake up and kiss all the stories about why you can’t good-bye.

Who is the new you? Do you like the new you? As one of my coaches asked, why would you choose to become someone you don’t like? It’s not necessary. Become someone you like.

How about you, what change do you see happening in this volatile season?