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Aaron William Perry reads the chapter “Change” from his book, Y on Earth, as an offering for the New Years transition from 2018 into 2019. Discussing the essence of personal change, the power of neuro-plasticity, and tools and techniques that help us replace certain life-undermining habits with other life-affirming practices, Aaron shares this inspirational chapter from a beautiful outcrop high in the Rocky Mountains. May this segment bring joy and power to you in your personal resolutions and change-making practices!
Transcript
(Automatically generated transcript for search engine optimization and reference purposes – grammatical and spelling errors may exist.)
Hi friends, welcome to the YonEarth Communities Stewardship and Sustainability Podcast
series.
We’re in the middle of the holy days, the depths of the winter solstice right between
Christmas, Hanukkah, and the New Year.
And I thought it would be nice to get out in the mountains with you, get out in the
cold, the elements, and share a chapter from YonEarth.
Chapter called Change, which is really being shared in the spirit of the changes we can
make in our own lives, in our own communities, really changes that affect our whole world.
As perhaps some of us will be setting intentions, New Year’s resolutions for this coming trip
around the sun.
And may this little chapter be an offering of joy and success to you with any of the
changes you’re cultivating in your life this year.
I’m struck by the power of the self-creative aspect of our human experience, our human
journey.
There’s a beautiful word auto-poasis, meaning self-creation that is part of this pathway
and this opportunity seems that we have to transform ourselves in our life journeys.
You may notice a little wind as I’m reading, you may even hear the call of raven, the
call of eagle, perhaps hawk, and I invite you to just enjoy these elements, enjoy these
creatures, these friends, behind me is the continental divide, the headwaters of ultimately
the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico here on this side.
Just over those mountains, the water flows to the Pacific instead.
So here’s a celebration of change, which is the 28th chapter in YonEarth change.
The only way to get where we really want to go.
Nelson Mandela tells us, you can never have an impact on society if you have not changed
yourself.
William Shakespeare said, it is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.
And Laozoo says, if you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.
And I like that one, it’s got some humor and levity in it.
So here we go.
Are you exactly the same today as you were last year, last decade?
No, of course not, obviously not, change is that one constant, we all experience in
our lives.
We change, the world changes, we must change.
It is both a truth and an exhortation.
Our world is changing rapidly.
Our climate is changing globally and we can change thoroughly.
If we are not yet sufficiently unplugged, sufficiently listening, thinking and speaking
sufficiently, envision and creating what is to be done, we must change.
If we are to survive, if our culture is to survive, if we are to create a sustainable
future, we must change.
Change is certain, but to what end, in what direction, that is not yet certain.
That is a function of our choosing, our choosing as a society, as a culture, as individuals.
From the previous chapters, we have explored and possessed much more why change is critical,
but what about the how to change?
What are the tipping point mechanisms we can employ to create the change we want?
Many of us choose to change our own lives, repatterning our habits by hacking our dopamine,
serotonin, oxytocin and endorphin cycles, to increase balance, health and well-being.
Sometimes change comes slowly, sometimes steadily, sometimes quite quickly.
We can also change our culture together.
We can do this very, very quickly together, with memes, tools and techniques we can culture
crack together, creating the world we really want.
There is a connection between our individual ability to make deliberate changes personally,
and our society’s ability to adapt and change as well.
As climate change and rapid desertification impact regions like North Africa and the
Middle East, as the lives of island and coastal communities worldwide, most especially
the poor, are disrupted by rising sea levels and more intense storms.
Let us ask, are we willing to change?
To work and to create a sustainable future and to help our global human family?
There’s a lot to think about.
I’m inviting us to explore how our intentional changes will create more hope, and how more
hope will create greater positive change.
At a time when change and when hope are terribly needed, this is not easy, but it is worthy.
We’re talking about changing both ourselves and our culture, our own habits, and what
we value as a people.
Let’s explore this a little more.
We probably often think of change in two different ways.
There’s the change that just happens that is foisted upon us.
Sometimes it seems good, that serendipity at play when we meet somebody special or find
a book at just the right moment, but sometimes it seems bad when we get hurt or in an accident
or natural disaster or suffer an unexpected loss of some kind.
Regardless of whether it’s good or bad, we might call this external change.
There’s also the change that results from our deliberate action, from the intentional
directing of our will and our consciousness.
And whether it’s good or bad, we might call this directed willful change.
External change impacts internal change.
Internal change impacts external change.
Our individual change impacts societal change.
Society change impacts our individual change.
Change impacts the individual and change impacts the world.
Change is both the ever evolving dynamic of an apparently random universe.
And it is the focused direction of our willpower.
Our will powers are deployed and directed both individually and collectively as a society.
With directed change, the image comes to mind of a rough, unestone block that is ultimately
to become a polished cube or sculpture.
We envision the transformation of the object and then exert our will and creativity to make
it so.
The stones of our lives are carved and polished through the process of tumbling about learning,
experimenting, growing and developing memory both individually and collectively of what
works well and of what doesn’t.
This essential memory creates background and context, providing greater insight and
foresight as we go forward.
Of course, this isn’t a solo activity.
Let us recognize and celebrate with gratitude those certain teachers, certain mentors, certain
parents and elders who help us along this pathway of development and improvement.
But at the end of the day, it is beautifully liberating and empowering to see that above
all others we are our own primary stone polishes.
In collaboration with the mysterious divine, we are ultimately the sculptors of our own
lives.
We ultimately each choose for ourselves, for our lives, our health, our well-being, our
families, our communities and our world, whether, how and why to change.
When we choose to change, it is through our own will, our own power, our own divine spark
of beauty, of self-awareness, of creativity.
Like a ship on the high seas, we are our own captains.
Whether we believe in God in a great architect in a divine and natural intelligence or not,
we might all realize that our individual free will is the most precious gift of opportunity
and possibility we are each given in life.
The initiative of our personal spirit is among our greatest treasures, one of the greatest
forms of wealth we will ever have.
We each have this precious treasure as our birthright.
As my friend, Lathem Matthews discusses in his book that I mentioned earlier, the four
noble truths of wealth.
At the core of this process of deliberate change is the practice of making friends with
ourselves.
Lathem has helped me realize that in so many ways our cultivation of both individual joy,
health and well-being, as well as a more sustainable planetary society is essentially
about making friends with ourselves.
Truly deeply befriending our minds, our hearts, our bodies, our emotions, and even the trillions
of micro-critters that live on us and within us, and that, of course, significantly influence
our minds, bodies, and well-being.
Perhaps this is like cultivating an artistic ability when we want to change.
When we want to make a change, we will be much more effective pursuing this change with
joy, ease, and grace than we will with a self-directed violence of shame, blame, or harshness.
If we were to try our hand at painting and get mad with rage that our first work isn’t
some masterpiece like a Picasso or a Rembrandt, what sense is that?
We have the opportunity to make all kinds of life-hacking changes in each of our own
individual lives.
Our own life-hacking potential is a gateway into tremendous empowerment.
Some of these changes are moving away from patterns and habits that aren’t contributing
to our health and well-being, or the health and well-being of our loved ones, our community,
our planet.
Others of these changes are moving toward patterns and habits that do contribute to our
health and well-being.
This may include habits and patterns around unplugging from technology, reading more books,
talking with more diverse people of different ages, interacting with living soil, preparing
and eating more fresh and lacto-fermented fruits and vegetables.
Those changes that are moving away from unhealthy habits, we might call put down changes.
That is, we want to put those things down.
The other changes moving toward health and well-being, we might call pick-up changes.
We want to pick them up and we want their frequency of expression to pick up in our lives
in a big way.
Some of the put down changes we might desire to make are very difficult.
It takes some of us a tremendous and sustained level of willful determination to quit smoking
cigarettes, for example.
I know firsthand how hard it is to quit smoking.
Although it’s not a laughing matter, the challenge of quitting smoking is cliché and there
are countless jokes about how hard it is.
My favorite is that one by Mark Twain, he said, giving up smoking is the easiest thing in
the world.
I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.
Although it may not obviously seem like this is a matter of life and death for many of
us it really is.
Or at least it truly is a huge matter of quality of life.
The hardest habits to quit are often the ones that once achieved quitting them, putting
them down, will yield enormous healthy benefits in our lives.
They are worth quitting.
I remember trying to quit smoking cigarettes so many times, I lost count.
Like many other people I started smoking as a teenager and boy was I hooked.
Morning coffee, time for a smoke.
Thinking about writing a paper for school, time for a smoke, stressed, time for a smoke.
In the afterglow of making love, time for a smoke, my brain and my body’s chemistry
were totally wired with addiction to the nicotine-laced chemical cocktail.
I had like Mr. Twain tried to quit smoking many times and it was not until I finally made
the firm rock solid decision in 2006 that for my own health and for the health and
future of my children, it was time to quit once and for all.
And so I did, with a little help from my friends.
I remember driving across the state line into Colorado with my dear friend Adam, after
visiting West Jackson’s Land Institute in Salinas, Kansas.
I had made the decision it was in fact a process culminating over the past several days that
this was it once and for all.
My buddy and I decided to relish in a final cigarette listening to some blues traveler
with the windows down and the wind blowing all around to just absolutely delight in this
final cigarette as we approached the border heading back into Colorado.
That was the boundary, the border I had set for myself that once crossed, I would never
go back.
That was the last time I touched a cigarette over 10 years ago now as I write this.
Sure there have been times at parties with old friends that the thought has crossed my mind,
the temptation has been there, but the voice of my agreement with myself and my God has
emerged stronger every time.
I am profoundly grateful for that.
My health is unquestionably better.
It is even better financially for me and my family.
And guess what else, I have also exercised much more rigorously and frequently in the ensuing
years than I did while a smoker.
I talk about positive feedback loops, all the result of choosing to change, and hacking
my own serotonin biochemical life patterns and habits.
As Charles Dewey conveys in the power of habit, the golden rule of habit change.
You can’t extinguish a habit, you can only change it.
There are mechanisms of neuroplasticity that cause our brain and neuro biochemical programming
to morph in ways that reinforce healthier and healthier patterns and habits.
Norman Doige in his book The Brain That Changes Itself tells us, the brain is a far more
open system than we ever imagined.
And nature has gone very far to help us perceive and take in the world around us.
It has given us a brain that survives in a changing world by changing itself.
Being smoking is an example of a put down behavior change.
We all have these opportunities.
Most of us are addicted or out of balance with some habit or another.
We all have the choice to finally make that deep agreement with ourselves and our God
to let that go.
The shadow that follows us when we make these put down decisions is the urge to fall back
into the old habit or addiction.
We can choose to gently love and embrace the shadow, yet resist with power as we continue
forward, ever stronger on our path to deeper health and well-being.
As for the pickup changes that we want to make, there is a somewhat different process
at play.
The singular decision point of profound agreement we make with ourselves may still be quite
similar, but the ongoing practice of cultivating the new habit is of a different nature.
It is not resisting some urge or temptation, but is instead developing the mindfulness
and the habituation that allows us to incorporate healthier habits routinely into our daily lives.
This requirement of deliberate habituation in pickup changes is, I think, what Winston
Churchill was talking about when he said, continuous effort, not strength or intelligence,
is the key to unlocking our potential.
There are some that might be easier than others.
We are making the choice to eat healthier food.
This involves an ongoing sequence of many small and simple decisions.
Although our purchasing choices may seem small and simple, they can become very powerful
in our lives.
What we prepare ahead of time, perhaps, on weekends also significantly influences our
ease of choices and options during the subsequent work days.
The pickup change of buying and eating healthier foods not only contributes directly to our
health, but also increases our energy levels and vitality, making it easier to exercise
smile and be generally more joyful.
Often we’ll find that positive pickup changes are more easily cultivated when we put down
those negative patterns.
Is it coincidence that I walked and jogged and practiced yoga more after quitting cigarettes?
Absolutely not.
The interactions of put down and pickup changes that we choose in our lives are incredibly
interwoven and incredibly powerful.
The key factor underlying our deliberate changes toward greater health and well-being is
our willful choosing.
Just as we can choose to improve the health and well-being and sustainability of our own
lives and in our own families, we are increasingly recognizing that our personal changes will benefit
not only ourselves and our loved ones, but also the whole world and the whole human family.
By choosing to compost kitchen scraps, we build soil instead of contributing more landfill
methane to the greenhouse gas loading of our global atmosphere.
By choosing organic and fair trade foods, we are supporting the health and livelihoods
of people and communities all around the world, instead of subjecting them to poisonous
chemicals and near-slavery wages and conditions.
While we are also promoting our own personal and family’s health, well-being and mental
performance, we have the power to affect considerable change in our own lives and in the lives
of our brothers and sisters all over the planet.
And as Malcolm Gladwell shares in the tipping point, just as a similar trim tab is used
on the giant rudders of large ships to change course, the small changes we choose to make
in our own lives will cause huge changes over time.
Now we have been talking in discrete terms regarding pickup and put down change, but they
often really go together, hand in hand, and can be mutually reinforcing, like the way
my quitting smoking correlated to exercising more, which caused which?
Neither one is actually the full answer, they both caused and enhanced the other.
As I turned to more exercise, my neurochemical constitution began producing more feel-good
hormones like serotonin and dopamine from the physical activity, filling the void left
by the craving of nicotine.
As my lungs and cardiovascular system began healing from years of smoking, exercising became
less and less painful and uncomfortable.
We can probably each think of several ways in which we can make positive changes in our
own physical neurobiological health.
As we each choose our more of these positive changes, we’ll not only get smarter and feel
better in our own lives, we’ll also have more and more positive impact through our consumer
demand, community interactions, and ultimately positive impact on our global society.
There is so much available to us right at our fingertips, and so much to celebrate with
gratitude as we deliberately choose the changes that improve our lives and the lives of our
families.
But there’s an arena of change that’s not quite so obvious in the biophysical realm.
One that is absolutely critical to creating the future we really want.
That is changing the way we think.
One of the most noble and courageous forms of change we can cultivate in our own lives
is changing our minds.
Such change can be caused by learning new facts, gaining new perspectives by talking with
others who have different experiences, and through our own changing experiences as we move
through the chapters of our lives.
To change our minds is one of the most powerful forms of healing and reconciliation.
It often requires immense courage to admit to ourselves and to others that we have, after
considering additional data, information knowledge and wisdom, come to a different conclusion,
belief or view than we previously held.
It can be scary, especially as so many of our most strongly held conclusions and convictions
make up the sinew and glue that bond us with our closest friends and allies.
How difficult it is when we realize we’re actually seeing things quite differently than
we did previously.
And then our closest circle still do.
Can we engage that change with love, compassion, courage and soft, measured communication in
order to strengthen and not weaken our relationships?
Can we maintain the God-inspired perspectives that we’ve come to and not be swayed back
to the mainstream of our immediate circles?
Can we find and engage with new friends and allies as well?
Can order to nourish and celebrate our dynamic and evolving worldviews?
To change our minds is one of the most noble and most challenging virtues we can cultivate.
Let’s pause here and reflect.
When is the last time you remember changing your mind after gaining new experience or
learning new information?
After speaking with others and encountering new knowledge and wisdom as a result of others’
experience.
We can reflect on such change in our own lives.
The truly brave among us will share and convert how and when we’ve changed our minds with
others in safe circles.
Our world needs us to do so.
Our world needs us to really consider and reconsider some of the underlying assumptions
of truth that have formed the veil of our unsustainable and unhealthy status quo.
Change takes courage and is for the courageous.
For it often requires us to examine, recognize and rewire the imprinting we’ve previously
received in life from our families, our teachers, our friends, and our small community bubbles.
It is a refashioning of our neurophysical, psychological imprinting that is at the core
of deliberate change.
It opens up a vast world of possibility and tremendous mystery, a world in which the
potential and capacity for co-creation with the divine nature of the universe is activated
and will necessarily surprise us.
The greatest minds have known this as an absolute truth through the ages.
As Shakespeare said long ago, we know what we are but know not what we may be.
It requires great strength, determination, and courage.
It is actually far easier not to change.
To reinforce old patterns, old assumptions, old antipathies, old certainties.
But this is a deadly path.
A path ultimately leading to psychospiritual decay and demise.
As George Bernard Shaw once said, progress is impossible without change.
And those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
Not to change is weakness and is anathema to God’s creation and divine spark of evolution
and growth that exists in each of us.
To hold on to old assumptions, beliefs, and convictions, more over to dig again with
stubborn indignation is the sign of an ossifying mind and a lack of faith in the divinely created
mysteries at work in the universe.
How could any of us humans possibly have a solid and constant purchase on the truth throughout
our lives?
What an absurd position to take in the face of God’s infinitely unfolding creation.
Changing our minds and changing our culture is to conspire with the unfolding mysteries
of the divine.
The more we each proactively choose to change toward health and well-being, toward care
and stewardship, the lower the risk becomes of large catastrophes and calamities in our
own lives and around the world, resulting from our collective impacts on the planet and
atmosphere.
These are the dimensions of the power lying within the realm of active and deliberate
change.
May we cultivate the strengths and courage to pursue such change with increased vigor
and conviction.
And let us also, meanwhile, have the wisdom to prepare ourselves for those unexpected and
disruptive changes which we can neither foresee nor control.
For we all certainly experience them in varying ways from time to time.
We can prepare our minds and hearts for these changes.
We can draw sublime wisdom from great teachers and leaders to do this preparation and to help
us through very challenging times of upheaval.
As family mentors, counselors, spiritual guides, and even certain books will be precious
allies during these times.
One of my very favorites is Pemichodorin’s work Comfortable with Uncertainty.
I was given this book by Winter while going through that very challenging loss that I discussed
in the chapter and vision.
My business partners and I were forced to close our business after a decade of dedication
tirelessly hard work and incredible feats of sheer willpower through harrowing challenges.
Winter’s support and children’s book were a godsend.
During this time of profound sadness and searching, asking, what’s next?
I spent time at the Pacific coast of Oregon, along alone at the shore.
Just me alone on the cold grey beach with the waves crashing in this otherwise silent
solitary space in March.
One wave after another, after another.
I read passages from Comfortable with Uncertainty.
They opened something up inside of me, deep, deep inside.
And I realized I wasn’t alone at all.
Comfortable with Uncertainty is a soothing and meaningful book to read during times of
disruption of loss of challenging change.
When it, children reminds us, we can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for
security and predictability, but the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty.
This not knowing is part of the adventure.
She also tells us in a beautiful acknowledgement of our interconnectedness that we work on
ourselves in order to help others.
And also, we help others in order to work on ourselves.
Her message encourages us to recognize that it is through vulnerability, patience, and
forgiveness, that we will awaken our compassion for ourselves and others and become the change
we want to see in the world.
I am eternally grateful to Winter for sharing it with me, and have since shared children’s
book with several friends when they themselves have gone through times of unexpected change
and loss.
My friend Howard, whom I didn’t actually know all that well when I shared the book with
him, said it was an incredible gift and companion during his time of pain from a very unexpected
divorce after decades of marriage.
I only knew about his divorce through a community group in our town, and the fact that he was
willing to open up and share a most vulnerable personal life story with me.
It was our human connection because of our willingness to be vulnerable.
It opened the doors for powerful change to enter into our realm.
There’s something to the alchemy that can occur when we’re going through experiences
of loss and devastation.
There’s a magic alchemy that allows us to connect more deeply with people.
It requires of us that we open our hearts, that we let down our guard, that we share
honestly and authentically that we’re hurting, that we don’t have all the answers, that
we’re perhaps mustering all of our strength to just take it day by day right now.
It’s absolutely wondrous the way people will show up in our lives when we open up in
this manner.
As Brunei Brown tells us, vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and
change.
It creates a vessel of connection that invites others to let down their guard, to share
their imperfections, vulnerabilities, and perhaps reflect on some of the challenges and
losses and devastations they’ve experienced.
Some of their changes.
It invites a depth of humanity and empathy that isn’t often the protocol in our day-to-day
lives of work and business and goings on.
It’s precious to open with vulnerability, it’s sublime.
It allows a sacred flame to emerge and dance between us.
It allows us to connect to deeply and authentically form connections that will, in many cases, last
a lifetime.
Vulnerability presents us the gift of the forge of deep friendship.
This is the opening of the flower of empathy.
I often wonder what could happen, what will happen in our world as we each choose deliberately
to show up with more authenticity, vulnerability, and empathy.
A whole bunch of ravens just flew overhead.
It’s beautiful.
Hello.
Nice to communicate openly with this kind of courage in the face of our personal changes
and societal changes.
How vast and deep can our experience of friendship, of shared empathy, of mutual intention for
greater health and well-being grow in our shared laboratory of change.
I invite you to pause here for a few minutes and think about how our experiences of friendship
and shared empathy give us courage and power to initiate change.
Internally, externally, individually, communally, for ourselves and for our world, what comes
to mind for you.
Friends, our world, our Mother Earth, our entire global family need us to explore and cultivate
this powerful force.
We are being called now to relinquish old, outdated stories and paradigms of just be tough, of
real men or real women don’t cry, of just suck it up.
The façades and veils of machismo, steel plate armor and invincibility perhaps made sense
in the biggest in the past.
They were perhaps assets then necessary for survival in a world where the biggest and
meanest bullies prevailed, but they are no longer assets to our society today.
For the dangers and threats we now face are of a much different scope and scale.
They pose a very different threat to us all.
One that is better overcome by the bonds of genuine humility and forged empathy than
by the might makes right consciousness of brute force.
Those old ways are now great liabilities.
We must change to create the world and the future we really want.
In the past it made sense to muster our strength and force to defend our tribes.
Today our tribe is the whole human family and our greatest threats are coming from our own
ways, lest we change.
It is through the cultivation of friendship, empathy, humility, wisdom and faith in something
far greater than ourselves that we will quicken and amplify deliberate personal change.
And thrillingly that will lead our culture out to broader healthier societal change.
Especially now as our changing planet, our changing climate may likely disrupt and devastate
more and more lives to what depth of empathy and courage and humanity might we go for ourselves,
for our friends, for our entire human family.
Can we imagine our own humanity, our own compassion and empathy and courage coming alive in order
to respond with patience, generosity and assistance just as our friends do for us?
Can we imagine?
Will we understand that we can bring love and compassion into this world to counter the
entropy and xenophobic tribalism otherwise taking hold?
Will we realize the connection between our self-love and compassion and our ability to project
compassion all around the world to cultivate resilience and sustainability in communities
all over the planet?
How many of us will quickly realize the truth that through love, compassion and stewardship
we will find great pathways to getting smarter and feeling better.
Let us know, let us understand and let us embody that it is change that will take us where
we really want to go and let us cultivate the humility and the courage to see and admit
when a course correction is in order.
What will we choose?
How will we change?
Why will we go where we go?
Socrates tells us, the secret to change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting
the old but on building the new.
Alan Weissman says, change is the hallmark of nature, nothing remains the same.
And Dr. Seuss with a little levity tells us, you have brains in your head, you have feet
in your shoes, you can steer yourself in any direction you choose, you are on your own
and you know what you know and you are the one who will decide where to go unless someone
like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it is not.
Many holidays, may this season of winter solstice of the Christmas Hanukkah, holy days, holy
nights and the New Year bring you great warmth and light and love and friendship.
And may you find wonderful strength and compassion as you choose more change for yourselves
and for our world.
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