I love shoveling the sidewalk in front of our house after a fresh snowfall. I don’t always get to see immediate, tangible benefits in the kind of work I do for a living. So I take particular pleasure in doing things, like shoveling a sidewalk, that show clear and obvious benefits. And because we live in a walking community, I value being able to make a clear and safe path for the many people who walk by our house every day.
It snowed an inch or two overnight last week, which given our lack of snow this year in Wisconsin, was a welcome morning sight. I was home on vacation, feeling lazy, and for once was in no hurry to clear the new snow off the sidewalk. I could see that there was no ice and that people had no trouble using the sidewalk and so I didn’t get out to shovel until mid-afternoon.
I learned a valuable lesson by waiting so long to clear the snow from the sidewalk. It is exponentially more difficult to clear snow that has been heavily walked on for the better part of a day. A job that usually takes me fifteen minutes took forty-five, and even then, the walk was not nearly as clear as if I had shoveled first thing that morning before folks were out walking. Tightly packed snow solidifies and sticks tight, much like snow does that is made into a snowball or a snowman.
As a person who works with people and organizations to help them make positive changes in their lives, I find my recently learned shoveling lesson to be helpful. And because many of us have set resolutions for change this time of year, you might find it useful, too. Here’s what I learned:
The longer a pattern has been in place, the harder it will be to change.
The more well-worn the path, the harder it is to make a new one.
Changing a habit that is new and barely formed is much easier,
as easy as shoveling new-fallen snow.
The applications here are twofold. First, be patient with yourself when working for personal or organizational change, especially when you are seeking to change well-established patterns. Second, keep in mind that the sooner you recognize that a choice or a pattern is not serving you well, the easier it will be to change it, or as the quote at the top of the column, which really sums all this up, states, “Sooner begun, sooner done.”
Article by The Rev. Dr. D. Scott Stoner, Living Compass
