People Want To Change Their Circumstances While They Remain The Same

Welcome to another edition of my Weekly Journal! I use this space to share about my journey from lawyer to jewelry business owner. In this week's journal entry, I'm writing about a simple yet profound sentence I heard the other day: "People want to change their world while they remain the same." It was said by one of my favorite authors and teachers, Michael Bernard Beckwith. If you read and follow my journal entries because you dislike your current career path and want to do something different, I encourage you to really think about and digest this sentence. It is not easy to make a big career change and many people give up before they've even started. You know why? I believe the answer lies in this very sentence.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that making a big, massive change requires a different, higher version of yourself. In fact, you have to first change things on the inside before you'll ever see real lasting change on the outside. Many of you already know that I quit my lawyer job after 11 years so let me ask you this. How do you think it happened? Do you think I got up one morning, said "I had enough of this!!!" and quit? Do you think I thought about it for a few weeks or a few months before I tendered my resignation? Well, from my perspective, I "started" to make my big career change when I enrolled in therapy in the second year of my legal career. That's when I really admitted to myself that my path was not sustainable. That I needed to make a change. My career was really out of alignment with my values and priorities, I was always sick with a mild cold or mild stomach ache (it's amazing what stress can do to you), and I just knew that I could not do this career much longer. But after investing about $150,000 in my law degree, I sought out the help of a therapist to talk things out. I wanted to make a solid decision, given the time and money I had spent to enter the legal profession. I didn't want to do anything I'd regret later. 

Well, those therapy sessions really set me on a path of self-discovery and self-awareness that I was not expecting! I was led to books and lectures and podcasts and all sorts of things over the following years. All of these things helped me become aware of the issues holding me back and the areas I had to work on. Everything from seeking the approval of my father through high achievement, to people-pleasing, to perfectionism, to victim mentality, and a few things in between. 

When I cleared some of these blocks (which took years) and became more in alignment with myself, things on the outside really started to change. Long story short, some old friendships left and new friendships entered, I quit my lawyer job, started my own business, moved from Chicago to the beach in South Carolina, went from single to in a serious relationship... and on and on the changes came. And what I can tell you from this journey is that Michael Bernard Beckwith is 100% accurate. You're not going to see your circumstances change unless YOU are willing to change.

Change is scary. Trust me, I know. But it's a necessary part of creating the life you want. I see it all the time - people want SO badly to change careers or some other aspect of their life, but they give up the second they realize it's going to be difficult or uncomfortable. They don't want to give anything up. They don't want to change their patterns or their routine. They don't want to change the way they think about career or money. Think about it this way - your current beliefs, your current way of being in the world, your current choices, got you to where you are today. Right? If you don't like where you are today, you've got to change some of those things, right? You've got to make new choices and perhaps change your beliefs around career and what you deserve in terms of a job, and the way you think about money, and you need to show up differently in the world in order to have something different. Does that make sense? It's so simple, yet so profound. 

If you want to make a big change, chances are you want to see that change ASAP. In that case, I highly recommend you work on the internal blockages and obstacles holding you back more than you work on your resume or new website. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Because here's the deal - if you are able to force and hustle your way into that big change without first fixing the internal "stuff" it's probably not going to last long. It's not going to have staying power. The world is pretty predictable like that - your inside and outside need to line up. Your inner world and your outer circumstances need to be in alignment and, if they're not, your world will self-correct. The thing will usually be taken away. Think of it this way - you know how many people win the lottery and end up bankrupt two years later? It's the same principle. You can't hand $4 million to someone who isn't in alignment with it - to someone who has all of these issues and negative beliefs around money and their being worthy of wealth. You see how that works? It's pretty amazing how our inner beliefs really do dictate our reality and our experience of the world.

I hope you're able to learn something from my own experience. If you'd like my Weekly Journal sent straight to your inbox every week, click here to subscribe. 

P.S. Are you on Pinterest? I'm in the process of creating a Weekly Journal board on Pinterest so you can easily navigate all of my journal entries. You can view and follow the board by clicking here. I've written so much about quitting my lawyer job to start g+h over the past couple years and I want to make it easier for you to access and read the entries that resonate most!

xoxo,
Stacy