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“People don’t really change.”
Wow. Not a statement I would expect from Donald Trump, who has time and again been a master or reinvention, and one who has written several best-sellers exhorting readers on to greatness. But that was exactly what he said during last week’s season premiere episode of The Apprentice.
Now, we must put into perspective that Trump is a billionaire who started out with a serious silver spoon, a lot of venture capital from the family business, and a drive and ego that - as he would state - has not really changed. He knew who he wanted to be, and is one of the most driven people on the planet.
But what about that idea that people don’t change? Heck, here at Life Motivations, we are building an entire business around helping people change their lives.
So what happens to us if we can’t change? That’s fine for Donald Trump, who started out rich and successfully stayed there. But the annals of success are filled with stories of people who completely changed their circumstances and created entirely new lives. In other words, they changed.
So who does one look to for thoughts on change? Do we think Oprah Winfrey, an abused child who grew up with nothing, would believe that someone couldn’t change their life? Do we tell all the people displaced from New Orleans that, “There really is no hope, so you might as well just stick with poverty,” rather than use the change in circumstances nature has foisted upon them to start anew and reach for the stars this time.
Right now we’re in the midst of development of a new product designed to help people take control of the change in their lives. Some of the course design concept comes from the idea that it takes 21 days to break a habit or ingrain a new skill (Step wrote about this in detail a few months back in an article on The Phantom Effect). We are committed to helping people change.
So is Trump right? Or are we?
If people can’t change, why don’t we just close down all the prison rehabilitation programs, drug addiction centers, therapists, churches, and everything else that over the decades and centuries have shown that change is not only possible but an admirable quality to which one should aspire? If we closed down everything the government is paying for that supposedly helps people change, we could probably balance the budget and eliminate the deficit tomorrow.
I’ll admit to having failed at trying to change my messy desk habit. But that’s because it has never become enough of a priority to me to truly commit to a change in my piling/filing system.
On the other hand, when any of us truly commit to changing something, it gets changed. New skills get developed. More knowledge is obtained. New opportunities are grasped, because we are open to changes in course, and we make choices that move us in the direction we want and need to head.
I choose to disagree with Trump in this circumstance. That is because I am committed to change, to development, to growth, to learning, and to doing what is necessary to move forward.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. There is change we can control, and change we can’t. But the more change we consciously control, the more we will achieve in life.
I think I’ll clean my desk now.
Victor Currie is Chief Operating Offier of Life Motivations.
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