How Serious Are You About Your Transformation?

There is a time when one needs to ask oneself the question: how serious am I about my transformation? This is a question of attitude, commitment and willingness. This is a question that I want my clients to answer even if I don’t ask it explicitly. It has to be clear to me that they have the commitment to change, to improve, to grow. This is more important to me than their natural ability as a learner. It matters little to me if they are in the beginning of their path or quite ahead, or even how fast they can learn. Their seriousness matters more to me, as does their willingness to practice, their openness to new things and ability to follow through.

If you are starting now, it’s OK. If you are spiritually clumsy, it’s OK too. If you don’t get things right at first, that’s also fine. Consistency will trump natural ability any day so show up, be consistent and transformation will be unavoidable. We all have some kind of natural ability, something that is easier for us to learn. This was brought to my awareness very clearly a long time ago when I was in music school.

In my teenage years I was in a music school learning to play guitar. I saw the same story repeating itself time and time again. Most kids with high natural ability wouldn’t be the ones longer on the path of learning. Sometimes, they were not even the ones playing the best, although it was clear that they could learn faster, understand new concepts immediately, or simply they had a natural “good ear”. I noticed as well that they too could quit very easily sometimes. Now yes, there were also students that had great natural ability and played great but the natural ability was not the most determining factor. Later in life, I saw this pattern repeat itself in university, dance classes and even in personal relationships. Without seriousness, there is no depth.

So how can you start to develop this quality? Start by showing up and show up on time. That is the very minimum you can do to cultivate this quality. In what I do, from the first session I can tell if someone is genuinely looking for transformation or not quite. Even showing up can be a struggle for some, and for others is being on time. So this is a very clear indicator of how someone lives his/her life and it is something that has a huge implication on all aspects of life. For that reason, showing up (on time) it’s a great start, a little but meaningful step that you can build up on. Like Woody Allen said: “80 percent of success is showing up”.

To understand the implications of not showing up or not doing it on time, let’s think about the opposite behaviour. Not showing up or doing it late shows that the person does not understand the importance of time and what it entails. It can also be seen as a lack of respect and disregard for the time of others. In the type of work I do, showing up late means even more than that. People come to me looking for transformation. So showing up late tells something about their attitude towards their own transformation. It tells about their commitment, their will, their emergency, their curiosity, and more.

To transform, one needs to be serious and have a proactive attitude but often there is more to it. For example, someone with anxiety might not be able to see clearly or might have a very distorted vision of the world and themselves. In these circumstances, it is very difficult to see the potential for change, to come to terms with the possibility of things being different, so improvement is a very far away idea. However, the desire for change might still be there. So what can one do about it? Break transformation into small enough steps. Showing up is the  very first step like I said. Showing up on time is a bigger step. Being open to being guided is another step and then you work with that, taking progressively bigger steps towards transformation. Even someone in this situation with the right attitude and progressive challenges, will be able to transform.

Seriousness in transformation is an expression of maturity and it is of paramount importance. So important that it can be the difference between someone feeling like a man or a boy, a woman or a girl. On the other hand, lack of seriousness usually comes from a place of fear and insecurity. However, at the surface, it often seems like that is not the case. It is very tempting to try to give a simple explanation for the lack of seriousness. It usually goes along the lines of “He just doesn’t care…” or “Oh, she is just lazy” or even “I’m not that kind of person”. I used to make a lot of excuses that sounded just like those. It is also very easy to make comments like that in respect to others but the truth is that it’s an incomplete explanation. I will give you a concrete example in the next paragraph.

Let’s say someone is overweight and needs to go on a diet. Let’s add a few more details: this person is very intelligent, understands well the health consequences and the social implications of being overweight. This person doesn’t even like to be overweight and remembers regularly the times when that was not the case. This person knows what is best for them and wants to lose weight, however is not able to. This person might even desire (yes, desire) losing weight but still is not able to. Could laziness or lack of willpower explain the behaviour? I don’t think so, there is something missing. What is missing is the real cause of the dysregulated eating. We all have mechanisms of self-control in our body, plus the ability of understanding, so if that is not enough to stop us from doing something self damaging, there needs to be some other explanation. Something is pulling this person in the opposite direction. The food is being used to compensate for something. There must be a void, an emotional hole, a need that is sucking in all that food, there must be a craving for the sensations, the pleasure that food brings. So it has very little to do with laziness, in fact laziness might be more of an outcome rather than a reason.

What about willpower? Yes, it has to do with willpower but overcoming something like this with willpower only might not be effective, it might feel like every day is like a battle and you need to fight that desperate craving. How long can you keep that battle going? How long can you win? The problem must be resolved from its root, the wound needs to be healed for effective transformation to happen and this requires seriousness. 

Being serious about transformation also facilitates learning, makes you more alert, pay more attention and integrate the teachings better. Moreover, commitment and consistency also come with this attitude and in this way, all these qualities start compounding, and transformation starts unraveling relentlessly.

Finally, another aspect is the openness that comes with being serious about really embodying the student role. You know, it is not only about showing up, not only about listening or even implementing the ideas that the teacher offers you. There is something deeper than that, that is often simplified and called the beginner’s mindset but is more about having the ability to be fully in the role of the student. There is something extra that passes from teacher to student when the roles are fully embodied, something intangible that connects and transfers at a more subtle level. Something that passes like osmosis, that is not measurable but is impactful and it affects the content of your experience during and after the process.

If this text resonates with you and you feel this is a quality you need to work on, I can help you with it. Contact me through email: [email protected]