Complacency and Change

The first speech in Toastmasters is called the Icebreaker.  It’s meant to do just that – to “break the ice” both in getting up in front of people to speak, and in introducing yourself to the group.  Mine was called “Continuous Improvement”, as this seems to be the byline of my life.

I remember my mother describing things I didn’t like as “opportunities to grow" - I responded once in my teen years that “I’m tired of opportunities to grow, I’d like to stagnate, thanks”.  (typical teen attitude!  at least for me)

However, there's one thing I have learned:  the opposite of success isn’t failure, it’s complacency.  Don’t stagnate.  

(note, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t rest!  More later)

It sounds like such a terrible word, doesn’t it?  But complacency comes disguised in so many ways, from “I’ve always done it this way” to “don’t fix it if it’s not broken”. 

While I’d agree that there are a few things in the “set it and forget it” categories of life, most of what we do has room for change or improvement, from your drive to work on a familiar route to the way you seek out new contacts.

So often, change is something we see as fearful and undesired, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Change can be good, and it can be something you control.

I’ve learned this first-hand.  Those of you who know me personally have heard me describe my significant other as “my 40^th birthday present”.  And he is – well, kind of.  There’s more to it.  There’s a few as-yet-unshared stories here which fill in some blanks, but let’s jump to where I’ve gone from drop-dead boring work in a call center to running a local bar.  A single mom in my late 30s, I looked ok, and tried to be a nice person - but somehow I kept dating perfectly nice guys who treated me like I was worthless.  They weren’t abusive per se, but they didn’t see me as of any value.

There was a reason.  It wasn’t that they secretly weren’t nice guys – they were, and are, good and decent people.  But they were responding to me, and to what I believed.  And what I believed about myself was that I didn’t have value.  It wasn’t something I came out and said, and wasn’t really something I could have or would have enunciated had I realized it then.  But it was definitely something I felt.  I just hadn’t listened to myself.  The people around me were listening, though, and it showed.

It all changed when I fell over a book in Chapters one day.  It was called “Wishing”, and while I couldn’t really afford it, I felt I needed to buy it, so I did.  I started reading it, and learned one powerful lesson: the way I saw myself was projected to those around me as though on a movie screen.  I stopped, and looked at the way people treated me, the way they responded to me.  What did this say about how I saw myself?  

The answer wasn’t exactly uplifting, but it WAS valuable.

It would be great to say that I immediately began to see myself as valuable, worthy, and even wonderful.  Not so – that’s still a work in progress.  I did, however, begin to look at what I wanted, and to believe that I deserved those things.  (… still waiting on that big lottery win…).  About a year later, things came together with a wonderful man and many years later, I’m glad that he’s still here.

The lesson this time is really more of a question for you to ponder - what’s in your world that you want to change?  What can you do to effect this?  Are you doing it – or why not?  Are you holding yourself back?

Whether your change is large or small, taking those steps towards change helps you to create success.  And whether it’s a small thing that affects only you, or something which impacts the people and the world around you, it’s a step against complacency – a step to greater success.