“You’ve Changed” They Said

“You’ve changed,” they say to me. “They” are people who have known me for a long time. Some of them say it with a smile. Others aren’t as pleased with the person they see I have become.

It’s good to hear others say “you’ve changed”. This means that my efforts are succeeding. I am consciously and actively working on changes.

My 50^th birthday is gone and half of my life is over. I wasted a lot of time letting life drag me along. Many times I made attempts to do things to set goals and make changes. But, I lost steam and gave up before I’d made any progress.

I wouldn’t say I was a quitter exactly. Instead, I was just too easily discouraged, especially when people around me were not supportive. When I inevitably stumbled I felt like a failure. Worse, I called myself a failure and gave up.

Obviously, beating myself up didn’t do much for my self-esteem. As my self-esteem decreased, so did my efforts to try to help myself. After a while, I started to believe that I would always be a failure.

Even after I recognized that I had a problem with my self-worth, I couldn’t convince myself that I could work on it. I had an attitude of “once a failure, always a failure.”

It didn’t help that there were not enough supportive people in my life. Maybe if someone had been able to show me how I was not living up to my potential when I was younger, I would have heard “you’ve changed” before I turned 50.

At various points in my life, I tried to make changes. I bought self-help books. A few times I tried to lose weight or set a new routine to better myself.

For a week or two, I stuck with it. Then, something would happen to cause me to miss a day or two. It was hard to jump back in after that. I would skip a few more days until I finally just gave in and quit.

In this way, weeks turned into years. I felt stuck in my own life with no hope for change. I just accepted that “this”, such as it was, was how my life would be.

My life was an endless loop, each day the same as the one before. The routine was mindless and robotic.

That routine did not include focusing on my health and well-being. Looking back, I think my low self-esteem played a big part. If you don’t value yourself, you really don’t care if you are healthy or not.

Over time my health declined as one might expect. Being overweight didn’t stop me from eating anything I wanted to. I’d had ankle pain since my early 20s so I avoided exercise and movement because it hurt. Honestly, I didn’t give a damn. If I had heard, “you’ve changed” then, it would not have been a compliment.

Occasionally a twinge of guilt would make me mindful of my unhealthy habits. I attempted a diet or tried to take short walks on days when I didn’t work.

But, like so many other well-intentioned attempts, they quickly fell by the wayside before I had made any progress. Before long I was back to eating doughnuts and sitting in bed reading a book.

So, you ask, why did you finally start to make these changes? I’m not sure I even have an answer to that. Maybe it was just time. Perhaps I grew tired of feeling like a failure. For sure I recognized that I was neither healthy nor young anymore.

The ironic thing about all of this is that over the years I have worked to help others raise their self-esteem. I just couldn’t seem to work on mine.

But, perhaps all the help I gave others worked its way into my subconscious. I started to question my self-doubts. I asked myself why I thought I wasn’t as good or worthy as anyone else. Thankfully, I couldn’t come up with a valid answer.

I’ve always been great at making outlines, checklists, and plans. So, I sat down with a notebook and pen and began to rewrite my life.

I listed all the things I felt needed changing. Then, I wrote down action plans for each one.

There were quite a few things I was not happy with in my life. Some of them I had no control over. It was up to me to accept that they would just be as they were. But, I actively began to work on changing the things that I could.

I didn’t just focus on physical health. Of course, that was important. But I also made plans to work on my mental and emotional health and wellness.

I had always wanted to draw and do art, but I was too afraid of failure. This time around, when I attempted to draw, I pushed through the failure and the fear. As a result, I discovered I have a fairly decent talent for art. I went from drawing to painting and liked what I did.

My writing has always been important to me, but sporadic at times. What I never realized was that it was also healing. I made a point to spend more time unloading my soul into a journal.

My physical health was more challenging. Arthritis in the joints made exercise difficult. I was still failing at losing weight.

My doctor referred me to an endocrinologist. She gave me the tools I needed to get started and keep going. With her help and my stubborn determination, I lost more than 80 pounds in less than a year.

None of these changes were easy or quick. They required work, time, and a lot of patience. I lost some people along the way, but I gained people who were more aligned with me.

Now, when people say, “you’ve changed,” I tell them, “I hope so.”