The Meaning of Life with Dr. Bob

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httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX6RxjyRm7E

“I just finished reading another self-help book, doc, and I am nowhere further along than I was before I started reading it.”

Rita, not her real name, had just uttered what so many people discover about self-help books and CDs and DVDs. They expect that they will be changed people the moment they close the back cover of the book or listen to the last words of the CD. It usually doesn’t happen. Sometimes the authors and presenters of these products do not do the consumers any justice either, because they never say that change takes pace, patience and practice. In other words, changes usually do not take place over night.

Please do not get me wrong here. I am in the business of self-help or self-development too. So I need to be careful that I am not simply dispensing shelf-help as opposed to self-help. (Shelf-help means the books are read then they sit on shelves gathering dust for an indeterminate length of time.) I applaud the many folks who try to help others change their lives. It is not an easy task.

I asked Rita, “Now, how long have you been noticing that you wanted to change?”

She answered, “About 40 years.” That will give you the correct idea that she was in her 60s, grandmother of 7, mother of 3, wife to 1. (The need-of-change in her life will not be mentioned because it is irrelevant to this blog post.) I said, “Then how did you expect to change in reading one book that, say, took you 4 hours to complete?”

“Never thought of it that way.”  Most people have never been told that bad habits are not easy to break and may take long periods of pace, patience and practice to change. Let me explain for you now.

Pace: What else is going on in your life? Hundreds of things. Can you devote full time to the change you want? Probably not. Therefore, you have got to pace yourself. Just as a race horse jockey must pace the horse as it runs the track so it has some strength left to finish the race, so you have got to give yourself the luxury of pace in your life. Set a goal to change. But set it realistically – somewhere down the track.

Patience: I know you want this new and brilliant habit in your life today. What has been is so detestable that you want rid of it now. Even when a surgeon removes a growth from one’s body, the healing process after surgery is sometimes a lengthy one. (My back surgeon said to me “two years” before I was healed from the surgery. Incredible.) You have got to give yourself permission to take the time that is needed.

Practice: It has recently been put forward that to master anything, the violin, skiing, boxing, singing, being the Beatles, being Bill Gates, takes 10,000 hours of practice. This seems to be true for everyone about everything. In other words, you have got to be ready to invest many, many hours in changing. This is not a sentence as if you have committed a crime. Rather, it is the way things seems to be. Yes, truly, there have been a few quick fixes. But in 99% of the lives of humans, practice has got to be put in.

Do not see this a bleak and dreary picture. Do not defeat yourself before you get started. Give yourself the permission you need to change by allowing, I repeat, allowing yourself pace, patience and practice.

Rita let out a sigh of relief. She looked over her shoulder as she left the office and said, “I feel a lot better.”

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