I want to feel better… now
When I was a product manager, it always felt like my biggest challenge of all was to convince folks that working on longer-term projects to address older parts of the code base or really tough customer challenges (and often these things overlapped) was valuable. It was an especially pernicious problem because I knew in my bones that working on the actual problems our customers were facing was the best way to keep them happy (retention), and therefore also be able to attract new customers (growth) in the long run. But when your leadership team is focused on creating “hockey stick” growth, investor demands, and new revenue streams, they tend not to be as interested in projects that might take a couple of quarters to complete and don’t provide immediate returns on investment. All that matters in that environment is the short-term result.
Alas, short-term thinking does not solely belong in the realm of tech companies. We as a society have collectively moved toward a short-term bias, and it shows up in many parts of our lives. We want to reach the top of the career ladder—now. We want to lose weight—now. We want to feel better—now. We want our Amazon packages delivered—yesterday. And we want those things so fervently that little else seems to matter. Not the conditions of warehouse workers. Not the CO2 we’re emitting. Not that we’re feeding problems of inequality. Not the potential side effects of a new drug. In the moment none of that matters.
The sad, hidden part of this short-term thinking is that we’re rarely satisfied once we get whatever it is we wanted. We lose weight only to still have a crushing lack of confidence. We get the promotion only to realize we don’t want to manage people. We get the new kitchen gadget and never use it because we still hate cooking. We get 2 new followers on social media, and it just leaves us wanting more.
A desire for change is embedded in the human condition. We don’t want to feel better so things stay the same—the very act of wanting to feel better is hope that things could feel different. That things could change. The problem is not (usually) our hunger for change in our lives; the problem is that we want it to happen faster, and faster, and faster without regard to whether the change we make will really make us feel better.
Change can be scary, and some changes are unwelcome, yet change is also something we yearn for in our darkest moments. When you come to therapy, it is a declaration of hope and a plea for change. But meaningful change takes thoughtfulness, time, patience, and grit.
Meaningful change requires thoughtfulness
Back when I was a product manager, I knew it was inadvisably to simply ask a customer, “Well what do you want?” It was much more useful to ask, “What challenges are you facing?” If I learned enough about a problem from multiple perspectives, it was more likely my team could find an elegant solution that really met the need. In fact there’s a (likely apocryphal) quote from Henry Ford, who supposedly said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
This same thing is true when we want change in our own lives. When we’re running quickly to keep up with the pace of our lives and we’re not feeling great, we might shout out, “Just make me feel better!” as we continue to sprint past. We’re in so much pain, and we just want it to stop. Of course you do. I want that pain to stop, too. Sometimes, though, we don’t yet know enough about the source of that pain to know what changes will help. It’s like having a gaping wound under the covers and taking a painkiller without actually finding, disinfecting, and sewing up the wound: you’ve addressed the symptom but have not taken the time to learn enough to aid the body’s process of healing in any way.
“I want to feel better” is a start. Can you slow down and get more specific? In what situations do you want to feel better? What does feeling better mean for you? Does it have to do with how you feel in your body? Does it have to do with the quality of your relationships with others? Does it have to do with feeling overwhelmed or stressed? Or perhaps a nagging thought or pattern of thoughts you find distracting or distressful? You don’t have to know for sure (and most therapists would love to help you explore what it means), but perhaps you can get mindful and curious—the change you want or need might look a little different than you originally thought with space, compassion, and attention.
Meaningful change takes time
When we want change enough to begin demanding it, there’s a high likelihood that the problems involved are pretty complex and intractable. (Otherwise, the change most likely would have already happened.) The more complex and intractable the problems, the longer change will take. This does not mean change cannot happen, but it likely means that the pace of change will feel incredibly slow to you, to the point it might not seem like anything’s changing at all.
In the world of software, you can take two different approaches when needing to make significant changes to a legacy codebase: you can dive into the existing codebase and slowly refactor the foundational code bit by bit until it’s able to support tangible, user-facing changes, or you can build a new thing from scratch to replace the old thing. The first option is slow and methodical and often completely invisible for stretches of time. The second often seems faster, but presents other huge challenges, like data migrations, moving users from one experience to the other, feature parity concerns, etc.
In the world of humans, though, the second option simply doesn’t exist. Your codebase is your codebase, and the only way forward is through. You did not become you, with all of your patterns of thinking and behavior, in a single day or a single year; you are a beautiful tapestry of experiences and adaptations. It will take time to see change in such a complex environment because navigating the vastness of you is a slow-going, gentle, methodical journey. Often in therapy, we first learn and practice skills to better regulate our nervous systems and become more mindfully aware of our experiences. Just like refactoring an old codebase, these practices prepare us for deeper work while building trust and safety in the therapeutic relationship—this is the foundation upon which we can make meaningful change in our lives.
Meaningful change demands patience & grit
Every time I see a skater in a park learning a new trick, I am humbled. I’ve never seen so much patience and grit as I see in humans with their skateboards. It’s absolutely incredible to me. If you watch for just a little while, you might see them fail in the same way over, and over, and over. Nothing seems to be changing—at all. It’s usually enough for me to have given up, but these people keep getting back up and trying again! You can tell it’s not just trying for the sake of trying either, because wheels are turning, attention is being paid, and effort is being channeled. In fact, if you watch them for long enough, they will eventually learn the trick. Oh, they might have some new bumps and bruises and scrapes along the way, but those will heal relatively quickly.
Meaningful change in our lives can feel a lot like that. In fact, when you start out in therapy you might feel a little worse before you start feeling better because you’re trying something totally new. And even as you welcome change into your life, unexpected things will come up. We cannot know what will arise when we begin to look inward, and we cannot know when we will begin to feel meaningfully better. But we can channel our best gritty skater, strap on a helmet, and show up with the patience of someone who knows the change they seek is worth taking time.
Meaningful change is an intentional, thoughtful, time-consuming process, but it is both possible and incredibly worthwhile. I have both witnessed it and experienced it firsthand.
If you are ready to make some changes in your life, I’m currently accepting new clients in California.
