Is it time for you to shake it up? To initiate some daring positive change in your life?
Shake it up changes don’t have to be major, like moving to a new city or taking a new job. Smaller changes like rearranging the furniture, cleaning out a closet, taking a pottery class or changing a few daily behavior patterns can have similar growth-producing effects.
Shake it up changes can prevent us from getting static, stale and stuck in our ways. They can help us perceive things differently and experience ourselves, others, our environments and even God in new and fresh ways. Creating such change can be fun, cleansing, and inspiring. Who knows what further change we might inspire in our own life? Or in someone else’s life? Change can sometimes bring about events that we didn’t foresee at the start, but could be wonderful!
Last spring my husband and I decided to shake it up by selling our family home and moving into a townhouse ½ mile away. While we didn’t move far, this change was full of unexpected opportunities for growth and new beginnings. The act of de-cluttering and simplifying our physical belongings resulted in a chain of emotional and spiritual growth spurts that pleasantly surprised us. As we used a new color palate to create hospitable space for ourselves, our family and our friends, creativity in other areas of our life came out of hibernation. Even small things like the change in floorplan re-routed our daily routines and gave us a fresh experiences. A different place to sit for morning coffee, a different route to the bathroom at night (that one took awhile to get used to), a different kitchen layout, etc. Because everything is so related to everything else, change in one part of our lives affected all the other parts as well.
If you think it might be time for you to shake it up in your life, the following exercise can be a helpful starting point. This exercise can be used to identify and change small patterns of daily behavior. It was developed by Sarah Susanka in her book, The Not So Big Life.
As she introduces the exercise, Sarah shares her personal experience of it. She identifies the three patterns of behavior she decided to change for a period of six months:
- No more skirts (she always wore long skirts)
- Cut your hair (she had worn her hair long for many years)
- No more alcohol after 5:00PM (she usually had a glass of wine when she returned home from work each day)
She describes how these three choices proved to be brilliant catalysts for change, not only in those patterns of behavior but in her entire self-image. She didn’t own any pants so she had to go buy a few pairs. In the process she realized how attached she was to her image of herself as a person with a skirt collection. She describes how the haircut nearly broke her heart because she was so attached to her long locks, and admits that even though she got a good six inches cut off, she really didn’t change this pattern of behavior as much as she could have. Since Sarah was very busy and not likely to take a sip of wine before 5:00PM, the wine decision increased the quality of her evenings simply because she was more alert throughout the evening.
What she discovered was that when she made small changes in her behavior patterns, big and rather unexpected shifts happened all by themselves.
THE EXERCISE
Write your answers to each of the following questions.
Regarding Clothing and Appearance:
- Are your clothes all or predominantly one color? If so, what color?
- Do you always or predominantly wear a particular article of clothing or a type of clothing, such as jeans?
- Do you always wear your hair a certain length or a certain way?
- Do you always or never wear makeup, perfume, or cologne? If so, which?
Regarding routines:
- Do you habitually read a newspaper, watch the news on television, or listen to the radio each morning or evening?
- Do you habitually check your e-mail or surf the Internet at certain times each day?
- Do you habitually have a cup of coffee or tea at certain times each day?
- Do you habitually sit in the same location when you eat?
- Do you typically eat the same thing at breakfast, lunch, or dinner? If so, what is it?
- Do you clean up from meals right away or later?
- Are you typically late as you leave for or return from work? If so why, and what needs to change so that you don’t?
- Do you typically feel frustrated as you leave for or return from work? If so, why, and what needs to change so that you don’t?
- Are there other patterns of behavior that you are aware of that aren’t covered by the preceding questions?
After you have your answers to these questions on paper, identify the patterns you are most attached to by rating each one from 1 to 5 with 5 being most attached and 1 being least attached. Pick three habitual patterns and change them for six months.
Sarah suggests that the more attached you are to the habit, the bigger impact the exercise will have on your life. So if you pick three items with a “5” rating, prepare to be challenged and know that you will be precipitating the most change in your life. If you pick three items with a “1” rating, you probably won’t experience much challenge, but will still see some effect.
Invitation: Complete this exercise, share your plan with at least one other person, and see what happens!