Big Changes Take Time

Sometimes we are so hard on ourselves for changes that we aren’t making RIGHT NOW, RIGHT THIS SECOND. We tell ourselves that we are useless, we are a failure, and that we are pathetic for not changing it already.

I always think about my addiction to coffee, and that it took me a solid 2 years to stop drinking coffee altogether. And even now I still slip up and drink it every now and again, even though I KNOW it makes me feel awful.

It only dawned on me the other day though that I started drinking coffee as a response to trauma in my life. In my young teens I started getting symptoms of PTSD, and drinking was my way of quite legitimately staying awake. I was exceptionally fatigued, had constant anxiety and depression, and at the time it was my only way of getting up in the morning and getting through the day.

Come 30 it was a hardwired habit to get up in the morning, drink a coffee to stay alive and then drink another 3 – 4 during the day. Not to mention that my brain was hardwired for it.

But the way that I gave up is an analogy of how ALL big changes happen, in your brain and in your life.

At first I gave up the sugar in my coffee. And then I gave up the milk. I had long blacks for a while. Then I got sick of long blacks and went back to drinking milk, even though I knew it made me feel horrible. And then I took two steps forward again with my long blacks. Then I went back to lactose free milk. Then one day I detoxed and managed to give up for a week. And I went back and forth on this treadmill, each time gaining a bit of ground. And in my head I would repeat to myself “it is OK to go backwards, because I am getting better and better every day”.

It took 2 years of this to finally give up coffee. I go months now without drinking one. And then I fuck up again. I drink coffee for a day, I remember why I hate it, and I stop again.

We have to remember that changes of a grand nature (stopping coffee, losing weight, becoming happy and content, redesigning your life, setting boundaries, ridding yourself of guilt and blame) ALL take a long amount of time to transform.

We have to allow ourselves the grace to realise that these are patterns which have taken a LIFETIME to form, yet we are expecting them to change within days, hours, minutes (our habits are hardwired, we have drank the coffee every day for 20 years and now expect to be able to stop overnight).

Sometimes we will go back to the patterns, regardless of how strong our willpower is, (sometimes we drink the coffee even though we KNOW it is bad for us).

Every time we replace the coffee for herbal tea, we are building neural pathways in the brain to support the change. Literally we are getting better and better every day, and with every choice we make not to drink the coffee. Regardless of two steps forward, one step back, it is moving us forward every time. It is only when we start to put time frames and beat ourselves up, that progress stops and we give up.

And even when you give up, getting back up and drinking the herbal tea is victory.

Leading from the front

Gabrielle Denman

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