Change Anything's Mission

Peeking Up at the Sun From the Underbrush

I’ve been rereading The Undefeated Mind by Alex Lickerman. It’s a wonderful book about how to overcome and grow from adversity. This kind of book has been written many times but this one is extraordinary.

Dr. Lickerman writes something that we’ve all read before, but he writes about it succinctly. If you have a strong sense of purpose, you can overcome many things. If you don’t, small obstacles can seem insurmountable. That may be one reason why people who suddenly lose jobs to which they had devoted their lives feel depressed and anxious, even if they are financially secure. Or why periods of unemployment can cause depression, even in the absence of financial problems.

The mission isn’t what you do, it’s the why behind the do. You may enjoy doing this one thing to accomplish the mission, and this other thing, not so much. But if you have a strong why, you can do it.

I won’t rehash the book, but it’s worth the read.

The things that have driven me in life seem somewhat disconnected: union organizing, public health, low carb nutrition (especially for diabetes and obesity), harm reduction, and teaching poor urban public school kids. I thought and thought last night to come up with what they had in common.

I puzzled, so I decided to try another tactic.

I asked myself, “What really bothers me? What do I find myself fighting against?”

That’s easier. Unjust authority. Ideology that ignores new information, science, facts. Groupthink. Censorship, punishment for thought crime, systems that reward conformity instead of excellence. Poverty.

Yeah. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Here’s what I came up with:

My personal mission, and the mission of this blog, is to help people (starting with myself) overcome structures, ideologies, beliefs and habits that prevent them from reaching their God-given potential.

The things that hold us back can be external or internal, but I think almost all are a combination of both. Things that happen to us have an effect, but that effect is often largely determined by our beliefs, which are largely determined by what we were taught, the people around us, and our history, even our genetics.

Like the old Facebook relationship status, it’s complicated.

But change is possible.

Once I write up my personal mission, I see why I have good friends and good frenemies on both Left and Right. I spent the first twenty years of my adult life fighting for workers’ rights, a cause that many on the Left certainly used to support. Say what you will about unions, nurses organizing to have a real say in what happens with patient care is a sight to behold.

I find myself making friends on the Right these days when we agree that people’s entire body of life work, even life itself, shouldn’t be dismissed because of one thing they say or are alleged to have said. Those of us who seem to need to write may experience on a visceral level the fear this kind of culture brings. I now know what cancel culture is, but I still prefer my definition, the epidemic of people not showing up to engagements they had RSVP’d for in the affirmative.

Is there even such a thing as an RSVP anymore?

I love the realm of personal change, where so much is possible if we believe that it is possible. That is where I end up parting ways with people on many sides. Just because something is difficult does not mean it is impossible. When we become willing to accept less than what we really want in our own bodies, jobs, lives, I think we lose something that is hard to replace. Habits are really just beliefs turned into repetitive action. If we believe we can do something, like work out, and do it over and over again, one thing will happen. If we believe that the natural result of the alarm going off is that we turn it off and ignore it to go back to sleep instead of getting to the gym, something else will happen (I speak as someone who did that three times this week.) There is a moment of choice involved (mine comes at 5:30 am).

My strongest held beliefs are around personal autonomy, bodily autonomy, and the freedom to express oneself. I used to be able to lie like a rug to get by, but I think I used up all my Southern girl and Stockholm Syndrome chips sometime in 2015. I defend my own autonomy fiercely, and defend others’ as well. Even those I disagree with.

I’m also a huge fan of scientific fact. That means recognizing it when new information calls into question old beliefs, and changing one’s mind and possibly one’s actions.

That’s another place where I part company with some. We may not like things that seem to be true, but we still have to deal with them.

One thing I think we can all agree on: flowers are pretty.

If your autocorrect is messing with you, you might end up turning a crocus into a crisis.