When you try to bring about behavioral change by an effort of will, you actually do violence to yourself, and the chances are very good that you will not succeed. This is so universally true that you can actually make money from it.
Interpretation
Forcing change through sheer willpower can be detrimental and often ineffective.
This quote emphasizes that trying to change one's behavior solely through willpower can lead to inner conflict and ultimately result in failure. Instead of pushing against oneself, a more gentle and understanding approach to change may yield better outcomes, highlighting the importance of emotional alignment and acceptance in the process of personal transformation.
In practice
In a self-help seminar to discuss personal growth strategies.
I believe that if you don't derive a deep sense of purpose from what you do, if you don't come radiantly alive several times a day, if you don't feel deeply grateful at the tremendous good fortune that has been bestowed on you, then you are wasting your life. And life is too short to waste.
When something happens to you, suffering doesn't begin. Suffering begins at the instant you label a bad thing - as something that is wrong.
When you label so much of what happens to you as 'bad,' it reinforces the feeling that you are a powerless pawn at the mercy of outside forces over which you have no control. And - this is key - labeling something a bad thing almost guarantees that you'll experience it as such.
The question is one of fighting the causes and not just being satisfied with getting rid of the effects.
The path to relative economic, social and ecological sustainability is guaranteed to be littered with failures of every nature and scale. If we recognize them and learn from them, the transition will proceed faster and in more resource-efficient ways. If, on the other hand, we prefer the short-term comfort of burying our failures, or of blaming scapegoats, the transition will be significantly slowed, or could even be derailed completely.
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
It is time to extend planning to a wider field, in this instance comprehending in one great project many states directly concerned with the basin of one of our greatest rivers.
Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.
Society, community, family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability and to prevent, or at least slow down, change. But the organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer. Because its function is to put knowledge to work - on tools, processes, and products; on work; on knowledge itself - it must be organized for constant change.
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