Sitting on the deck overlooking the Pacific I wonder why I ever left.
In the seven years I lived here I rarely came down to the beach, but my life was different then. I was different then.
Driving through Brentwood on Tuesday I saw a graffiti sign that said, “You can change the world.”
An hour later walking past La Scala in Beverly Hills, a man passed me in a t-shirt that read, “Everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to change.”
Both statements are of course true enough, and it is only those of us who are willing to change that are able to effect change for others.
Back when I lived here I couldn’t just chill at the beach.
I wasn’t built that way.
Go, go, go was coded into me when I punched out of the womb six weeks early and it wasn’t until recently I learned how to run the slow, slow, slow program.
And even though I spent most of my adult life confused about where I was headed, like a soldier training SERE, I knew to keep moving.
Even when I blew out of LA with twin-turbos screaming towards the mountains of Vail Colorado I had no idea where I would go when the snow melted.
I didn’t know if I would come back to Cali or keep moving east, but I did know one thing—I would be changing.
One of my teachers likes to say, “All we are is change.”
And the irony of personal change is that although us humans are changing all day every day of our lives, it is often hard to make the changes we want to make.
There is of course only one way to do it—do as Nike says and Just Do It.
Here’s how.
Look at you and your life and identify just one thing that you would like to change. Now ask yourself these three questions:
1. How have you been held back by not having made this change?
2. If you had made this change already, how would you already be benefiting?
3. What is just one thing you can do today to either make this change, or make a smaller change that naturally leads to this changing over time?
Now, just do it.