One Degree at a Time - Lasting Change

If you have ever felt yourself in the middle of a big shift, you are not alone.

Almost everyone I have spoken to lately, including all of us here at Platform 13, has felt some degree of change moving through their lives. Some of it is planned, and some of it arrives uninvited, like an unwanted house guest. The reasons vary, and it isn't really about astrological charts or timing. It is simpler than that: change is always upon us.

Much like the waves, changes come and go, constantly. So why do we dread them so? Perhaps we only welcome the changes we choose - the ones where we already know the outcome. Or perhaps it runs deeper: the unknown, the fear of making the wrong choice, the endless "what ifs," all of them projecting some future insecurity onto an outcome that hasn't even happened yet. And yet, if we stay exactly where we are, we will never know what waits on the other side.

Fear, in the end, offers us two paths: feel everything and run, or feel everything and rise.

John and I have lived through a good many changes. We have moved countries, learned new languages, found our way into new cultures, made new friends. From the outside it sounds thrilling - and it is - but it takes a certain kind of character even to attempt it. It has not always been easy, and it has not always been kind. But it was our choice, and we welcomed the new air, the new people and the new experiences in, embracing it all with our usual gusto.

But what of the changes we do not choose? The loss of a family member or a beloved pet. The quiet fading of a friendship we were sure would last forever. These are the ones that shift our perspective without asking permission - and the way we must adapt to them, quickly and often alone, can be exhausting and deeply unfamiliar.

Perhaps the most challenging change of all is the one we make within. Changing our hair or our clothes is exciting; changing what lies underneath is daunting. It asks us to look below the surface of everything we thought we knew - because before we can change something in ourselves, we first have to be willing to see what needs changing. And where on earth does one begin?

Let us start at the actual beginning: ages one to seven, when we were at our most impressionable. Long before we knew how to reason, we were quietly making the decisions that would shape our whole lives - forming a personality, and a set of beliefs about our place in the world, our relationships, our passions and our limitations, with no idea of how any of it would one day play out. It seems a bit unfair.

We were only the observers. And yet how we formed those early beliefs is precisely why change, now, matters so much. Because what if the fear of change is really the fear of choosing wrongly? If a past decision turned out badly, of course we grow wary of making another. We trusted our instincts then - so how are we meant to trust them now?

We tell ourselves it is easier to stay the same, whatever "the same" even is. But staying still only gets harder as time passes. That nagging feeling in your gut, every time you do the thing you have always done - that voice only grows louder the more you ignore it, like a child mid-tantrum in the sweetie aisle. Eventually a point arrives when the fear of not changing becomes greater than the fear of changing. A health scare stirs a new resolve around food or movement. A lost job opens a door to a venture never imagined. One way or another, that voice will be heard. The only question is whether you wait until the outer world forces your hand, or you choose, willingly, to move first.

And here is the gentlest secret of it: lasting change happens one degree at a time.

Think of a ship's course. A single degree now, held steadily, will carry you somewhere entirely different in time — and gently enough that your nervous system can adjust along the way. Grand, sudden moves tend only to frighten us back to the safety of sameness, or worse, send us off in the opposite direction altogether.

It helps, too, to consider our motivation. Changing for others — to fit in, to be liked — works for a moment. But I have found that the deepest changes came when I wanted them for no reason other than that they excited me.

Our minds, after all, are only trying to keep us safe — and "safe," to a mind, usually means whatever is already familiar, even when change would serve us far better. To announce "I am going to change who I am" can feel, to the self you are now, like a threat to its very life. Who is this new person? Can we trust them? What if we don't like them — or worse, what if others don't, and we are no longer loved? And so the mind resists the newcomer at all costs.

It is a beautiful thing when someone supports our growth and loves us through it. But when we have built a life on being praised for being a particular kind of person, we may find that not everyone wants us to become our fullest self.

Happily, "just doing it" need not mean setting fire to your life, moving abroad, or becoming unrecognisable overnight. It might simply mean pausing before you automatically say yes. It might mean noticing how you speak to yourself after a mistake — awareness is never to be underrated. It might mean a ten-minute walk, a single phone call, one honest question. It might mean admitting that something you once wanted is no longer what you want now.

So although one degree can seem almost insignificant, it can quietly alter the direction of an entire journey, until, in time, you arrive somewhere altogether new. You do not need to know exactly who you will be when you get there. You do not need a perfect plan, or a guarantee that you will never look back. You need only enough courage for the next honest step.

Change will come, whether we invite it in or not. But when we meet it consciously — gently, patiently, and one degree at a time — it stops being something that merely happens to us. It becomes, instead, a way of returning to who we truly are.

On Platform 13, wholeness isn’t found - it’s remembered. Because loss is loss, worthiness is universal, and no one is alone. We are all in this together.