Part 2 - Nothing ventured, nothing gained

What people get wrong about changing.

This Life Intelligence post is open to all, not just my most supportive, super wonderful paid subscribers! Life is better when you know what to do, and you are not alone. I want you to build your life intelligence muscles and relationship skills, avoid mistakes, live well, and be smart. But I can’t help you if you prefer not to help yourself. Becoming a paid subscriber means you’re into helping yourself, AND I will appreciate your generosity immensely!

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What people get wrong about changing.

Depending on how much change you get, you could have enough for something good, moneywise and otherwise. Just like coins in a jar, change accumulates over time. Those little moments rattling around in the pockets of your life add up to a totally different you years later. Another way things happen is when you least expect it, are not ready, have no time for an emergency personal transformation, or when you itch to make something incredible happen. Either way, your mindfulness, skillfulness, and deliberateness in the process will determine the outcome. You could end up better off, even beyond your wildest estimations. The gutter is also an option and a real one if you don’t pay attention to your attention and choices.

A fun game to play with yourself is to think about how you ended up where you are, not just physically but also psychologically. How did you end up with the house, the spouse, the job, the place, beliefs, etc? Something had to happen first before this happened. And before that thing, something else had to happen.

Did I ever tell you how I got the Lulu Bell? OK, don’t judge me, though.

I tried online dating. Met a guy who showed up 30 minutes late for our first date, telling me how he yelled at some dude at the gas station. I raised an eyebrow disapprovingly. He raised his wallet to show me a picture of the cutest puffball I’ve ever seen - a black and white little bugger sitting pretty, tilting its head to look at the camera. Something stirred in me. I fell in love INSTANTLY. I knew I had to meet and pet that dog. The only way I could do it was to pretend I wanted to see the guy a second time.

“Second date, at your house!” I cheerfully suggested. He gave me a wise-ass smirk and agreed.

As soon as he opened the door, Lulu jumped up at me super excited and even peed a little on the floor. I picked her up and didn’t put her down for the entire evening. From that moment on, I plotted every kind of thing you can imagine to get that dog! The guy was cramping my style, but my personal sacrifice to give Lulu a better life was worth it. She lived in a dark studio alone for ten hours a day while he went to work and drank with his buddies after. He wanted a manly dog. To him, she was embarrassing, so he didn’t walk her much. Didn’t potty train her. Didn’t play with her. Didn’t let her on the couch. Didn’t let her in the bed. Didn’t even give her a bed of her own. She slept on the floor by his bed on a thin blanket. She ate the cheapest kibble and had no toys! None.

He kept her as a power play against his ex to have around for his two little girls when they visited every other weekend for a day and a half, the extent of his court-allotted time. He had no love for Lulu, and that was all she wanted.

The day we met.

I offered to dog sit. Shortly after, he took me up on it. I had her for a week! I potty trained her. She slept in my bed even though I bought her a bed. She sat next to me on the couch. We played together and walked a lot. I got her a toy and bought her good kibble and nice treats. She ran away from the door when he came to pick her up.

I ditched the guy but kept babysitting Lulu for free while bitching at him about his inconducive-to-little-dogs lifestyle. After about a year of back-and-forth arguments, he offered to sell her to me for $1000.

So, before I could be who I am today, I had to buy a used dog for $1000.

Lulu made me goofy. She taught me to say, “I love you.” She made me patient and understanding. She eroded my selfishness, brightened my days, and gave me a joyful purpose.

So, the first thing people get wrong about change is that what they want to happen can just happen without something else having to happen beforehand. For example, usually, the path to becoming a CEO of a Fortune 500 company is to rise up the career ranks and gain experience and expertise. And before that happens, the ambitious must have the education required and compete in the job market until they get the right kind of job to start with.

People want to meet their dream mate and have their dream life. There is nothing wrong with wanting, but first, you must make yourself into what someone dreams of finding in a mate, too. You can’t be a dysfunctional, hot mess of a drama queen/king and hope that a decent person with all the potential you want would want to spend more than five minutes with you. Even if the person does come into your orbit, the chances of you recognizing him or her as such are slim to none.

The second thing people get wrong about change is that what you see is all there is. When we look at others and their accomplishments, we only see the final product. When we look back in time, it all looks like life events lined up perfectly in the correct order to bring about the current circumstances. Sadly, that straight line connecting key moments is actually a meandering that twists and turns in many unforeseeable ways with plenty of setbacks and obstacles along the way. We look at others and we assume they got lucky, had the right guidance, the perfect opportunities, the help they needed, took advantage of the right time, or that they are somehow special, smarter, more skillful, gifted, fortunate, or more adept at making the right decisions than we are.

What we don’t see and don’t know about are the sweat and tears, the losses, and the sacrifices. We don’t know what it was like going through it all and how hard it felt doing it.

I am standing at the door of a massive change, leaving my home country, the USA, for an unpredictable adventure abroad. When I sent out the email announcement, I received a lot of “congratulations” and “I am jealous” replies. People imagine me packing my bags and my dog and having fun. How exciting! It’s true. That’s the idea. But getting here required multiple levels of change. The most fundamental one was changing my identity, tightly bound to what I did for a living, the community I built, what I considered my purpose, and how I was supposed to fulfill it.

That change started sometime in 2013 when I realized yoga was not the path to liberation. It was the path to ego gratification, despite the promises made by sages of bygone ages. Modern humans don’t function the same way. They have the uncanny capacity to transform everything into self-gratification and to look for ways of increasing their self-importance. Social media helps motivated yoga teachers gain followers with very little effort compared to what was required hundreds of years ago. No one needs enlightenment anymore to be a famous, sought-after teacher. They just need the right lighting.

As a result, the path of yoga leads to unnecessary physical and mental injuries inflicted on the easily impressed and ignorant by their self-proclaimed gurus. Yep, you guessed it. There’s a book exposing yoga culture for what it is in the works. By “the works,” I mean I’ve got the title and ideas but exactly zero pages written. It’s one of the projects on my to-do list when I am gone.

The second level of change was preparing financially and structuring my life to open the possibility of a different path forward. Hence, I got a master’s in psychology, flipped some houses, and worked on a few different projects and side hustles, all to increase my income while doubling up my effort to save money and divest myself of things and people that could hold me back. Notice, I said, “to open the possibility.”

That’s because change often starts with nothing but a possibility.

First comes the realization that something needs to change and/or the inspiration for something new and different. Followed by the possibility of it changing, followed by preparation for whatever happens next. Eventually, some real plans emerge, but even these plans are subject to change, as I explained in last week's post.

This leads me to the third thing people get wrong about change. People think it’s easier than it actually is. The process of changing is full of uncertainty, anxiety, self-doubt, depression, and massive amounts of stress at times, occasionally punctuated by hope, excitement, illumination, clarity, and inspiration. There’s more figuring out to be done than there’s enjoyment unless people enjoy figuring things out like I do. Depending on people’s situations and the nature of change, there could be arguing with others, going against expectations, self-defense, feeling isolated and misunderstood, fear of running out of resources, and a plethora of other negative emotions and experiences.

Change can feel like being squeezed through the narrow part of an hourglass. You start larger than life and trickle through the center until all of you pops out the other side, or you get stuck. Getting stuck sucks more than change. It’s where nothing happens, and every day is a Groundhog Day. Personally, I hate that. I’d rather bleed trying to squeeze out the narrows than stay clean doing nothing.

The scariest thing, especially about embarking on big, huge, audacious changes, is that there is no guarantee that whatever we undertake will succeed and be as amazing as we envision. It could be a lot better. Most likely, it will be different. But certainly, once we start, we can never return to where and what we used to be because it will devastate us.

Regret is harder on the soul than stumbling on the path of transformation, invention, and re-invention.

Ironically, the fourth thing people get wrong about change is that while it appears easier for others, it’s definitely hard for them personally. Everything I just said above causes fear. Fear causes people to retreat to what they know regardless of how much they hate it. Better safe than sorry, I suppose, even if they are not that safe and will be sorry for not following through. Never underestimate humans’ ability to rationalize bad decisions!

Well, now you know better. It’s not just you. It’s the process itself. We must put some elbow grease into it to earn our stripes and the higher ground. As the saying goes, “Easy come, easy goes.” On the other hand, “You reap what you sow.” You also “get out what you put in.”

I’ve heard it said that if you want to be the Phoenix, you must burn first. There is no other option. The ashes of your old self fertilize your new growth.

Chomp, chomp. Don’t be shy!

Lulu and I have just a few more weeks to organize our departure. I plan on writing all about the process of wrapping up one life and starting another and about our travels, places we see, things we experience, and the ideas that spring from unexpected connections. Soon, there will be a new travel series, Trails & Tales, available to paid subscribers. I’ll share tips and tricks for traveling with pets and without and the wisdom I gather from strangers and paths less traveled. For now, I’m focused on Europe. She will have a doggie passport, which grants her unrestricted entry to all of the countries in the European Union.

For the yoga peeps, I’ll still teach four group classes per week via Zoom. You can find the schedule at https://www.valpetrova.com/yoga/classes

Alternatively, if you want to do yoga with me on your own, use the unlimited on-demand streaming library at https://vimeo.com/ondemand/yogawithvalp
It’s only $25/month 😊

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