Do People Change?

People are forever in the process of becoming who they are.

What this means is that you have a life, an identity, a self with all of its inherent limitations and possibilities. You evolve, usually in an adventitious way. Who you are determines who you will become – unless you make disruptive choices.

Neither hope nor desire can change the logic of this process. Only choices implemented under adversity can. What you cannot change about yourself is therefore a person you cannot become.

You may want to change, you may want to make changes in others or in the rest of the world. But the forces of stasis – of things remaining as they are – will resist you.

It isn’t so much that people resist change, as the media often present it.  It is simply that people are likely to prefer the familiar over the unknown.  We all have our comfort zones – mentally, emotionally, and physically. It’s easier and less risky to keep things the way they are.

Don’t settle for whatever comes your way. Decide your destiny and how you have to change to pursue it. Decide what kind of other people could enable you to do life as you would.   Be a warrior against the arbitrary forces (the dragons of the contemporary world you inhabit) that will otherwise victimize you.

-Lee Thayer, Thought-Leader