In a world of change, can I stay the same?
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
Change.
Oh wow, it’s happened again. I’ve hit the wall of my little box called life and now I’m standing at that familiar crossroads asking myself the same question we all eventually ask:
Do I keep doing what I’ve always done?
Or do I peek over the edge and see what else might be possible for me?
That space between “should I?” and “shouldn’t I?” is where we start to feel it.
The discomfort.
The irritation.
The quiet knowing.
The “I know I should, but…”
I see it in the eyes of my clients all the time. Deep down, they already know the answer but the reality of change, of shifting identity, of stepping into something without complete control or certainty feels overwhelming. So, they teeter on the edge of possibility. Dipping their toes in. Pulling back out. Returning to safety before they’ve even given themselves the chance to adjust.
We moved to Brisbane in January this year and without seeing the house or really knowing the area, we packed up our lives and left. At the time I was full steam ahead, running into my next phase without looking back. Just movement.
Now, after a few months of being here, I’m beginning to realise a few things about change and about myself.
It began while watching my husband fix the people this week in preparation for winter, you see we never had a pool before and now we do – yay for us. Whenever we have friends over, or even when it’s just the three of us, I love taking advantage of it and going for a swim.
Some days I enter the water slowly. One toe, then the knees eventually the thighs. Inch by inch I lower myself in, convincing myself I can somehow avoid the shock of the cold. I panic at every sensation and when I observe this in myself and others - honestly, I think this is exactly what change feels like.
We cling to the dry safety of what we know, even when we already understand the inevitable truth: eventually we will adjust.
Other times, I run and jump straight in without even checking the temperature first.
Sometimes the cold stings instantly and I feel every part of my body come alive again.
Other times the water surprises me with warmth, freshness and ease, but every single time I leap without hesitation, I notice something shifts inside me.
There’s freedom in the decision.
Freedom in not waiting.
Freedom in trusting yourself enough to just go.
Strangely, that feeling stays with me for the rest of the day. This sense that maybe anything is possible when you stop standing at the edge analysing every outcome.
I notice the same thing happen with clients.
There comes a moment where something clicks. They realise they are going to be okay. That this next step isn’t there to destroy them. That possibility exists outside the tiny rules they’ve lived by for years because let’s be honest, for our entire lives we have been growing into new versions of ourselves. We’ve been stepping into unfamiliar chapters since the day we were born.
Yet somehow as adults we forget this.
We convince ourselves the slow inching is safer than the jump, even when the jump might actually feel more exhilarating, more freeing, more alive.
So instead we wait.
We hold off.
We search for the “perfect time”.
We ignore what our heart already knows.
Just dive in.
What is the thing that really holds us back?
Old beliefs?
Old rules?
The expectations we inherited from other people?
I will never forget a client once telling me that when she moved to London she created one rule for herself:
“I am here to work.” and guess what she did?
She worked.
And worked.
And worked.
Fifteen years later she looked around and realised she had built a life entirely around productivity. Very little family. Very few close friendships. Just work.
She had fulfilled the rule she created for herself perfectly.
Now she was being asked to think differently. To consider what she actually wanted next. Who she wanted to become. Whether this current version of life still fit the woman she was becoming.
I watched her dip her toes into possibility and then retreat back to safety over and over again and every time she stepped closer to change, the old rule pulled her backwards:
I must work.
I must make the family proud.
I must be independent.
I must never rely on anyone.
The heartbreaking part was never a lack of capability. It was the fact her own limiting beliefs had become the cage.
I see this in young adults too. Believing this current version of life is the only path available to them. The only identity they’re allowed to have. The only happiness they’ll ever find but if you look back at your own life, you’ll realise you have always been learning, evolving, adapting.
You are simply standing at the next layer now.
We have been changing since the day we were born, so why does change later in life feel so much harder?
Why do we lower ourselves into it so cautiously, aching at every cold sharp moment?
Is it because we have more to lose?
Because we no longer believe in ourselves?
Because we are simply exhausted?
I think sometimes it’s all of those things.
Maybe we are tired but maybe we are tired of the life we are currently rushing around trying to maintain.
Maybe we don’t believe in ourselves anymore but if you think about it honestly, when we were babies we had absolutely no idea how to walk and yet somehow we kept trying until we could.
At some point we trusted ourselves enough to learn.
Which means that capability still exists within us now.
Could there be more to lose?
Possibly.
But there could also be more to gain and maybe that’s the real question worth asking ourselves:
What is the actual loss I am afraid of?
Loss of identity?
Loss of certainty?
Fear of failing?
Fear of judgement?
That last one stings, doesn’t it?
I know it has for me.
When I really look back, I can see judgement threaded through so many stages of life. At school I was bullied. Then in high school it became judgement around who I dated, what I wore, how I spoke. So much of it was external, shaped by the social reality of the environments around me and what other people deemed acceptable or worthy.
Then later in life the questions changed.
Would I be judged because I didn’t go to university first?
Would people think I wasn’t capable enough?
Professional enough?
Smart enough?
Somewhere along the way I realised something quite confronting.
The judgement eventually stopped coming from everyone else and started coming from me.
That is why this one stings so deeply.
If I am brutally honest with myself, the fear of judgement or failure is often not really about other people at all. It’s about what I will think of myself if things do not work out.
What story will I attach to it?
What meaning will I make from it?
Will I suddenly believe I am not enough?
Once we leave school, most people are no longer standing around openly criticising every move we make, yet somehow the voices remain.
Why? because we internalised them.
We took moments of criticism, rejection, embarrassment or comparison and quietly turned them into rules about our worth, our capability and our potential.
Rules like:
Don’t stand out.
Don’t fail.
Don’t look stupid.
Don’t take risks.
Don’t disappoint people.
Over time those rules stop sounding like someone else’s opinion and start sounding like our own truth.
That is the part we have to face because eventually we can no longer blame the people around us for the limitations we continue to place on ourselves. Most of them stopped saying those things years ago but we kept repeating them internally.
We carried them forward.
We nurtured them.
We let them shape the reflection staring back at us in the mirror.
Maybe growth is not about becoming someone completely new. Maybe growth is finally questioning whether those old rules were ever truly ours to begin with.
So what question are you asking yourself lately?
What is your internal voice saying when the world finally goes quiet?
Because sometimes beneath all the overthinking, fear and hesitation, there is actually a deeper knowing sitting underneath it all quietly asking for more.
More honesty.
More alignment.
More life.
More of you.
And maybe the reason change feels so uncomfortable is not because we are incapable of it, but because somewhere along the way we forgot that change has always been part of us.
We have been changing since the day we were born.
Learning.
Falling.
Adjusting.
Growing into new versions of ourselves over and over again.
At one point we knew nothing.
No certainty.
No guarantees.
No proof we could do any of it.
And yet we still learned to walk.
Still learned to speak.
Still became who we are today.
So maybe this next chapter is not asking you to become someone else entirely.
Maybe it is simply asking you to trust yourself again.
To stop standing at the edge of the pool convincing yourself you need absolute certainty before you jump because the truth is, whether you ease yourself in inch by inch or leap before you feel fully ready, eventually the water stops feeling cold.
You adjust.
You breathe.
You move.
Just like you always have.
To loosen the grip on the old rules.
To question the voice that tells you to stay small.
To remember how far you have already come.
Because if you are afraid of change, perhaps you have simply forgotten something important:
You have survived every single version of yourself so far and look how much you have grown.
Your friend,
Vikki
In this blog, I've shared just a glimpse of a few NLP concepts and techniques. If this sparks your curiosity and you'd like to explore more, or even consider becoming an NLP Practitioner yourself, we'd be delighted to welcome you to our in-person NLP certification training. Our next sessions are scheduled to run in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane in 2026. We'd love to see you at one of these NLP training sessions.
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