Change is never black or white.
It’s not a zero-sum game. You don’t have to always win for someone else to lose or the other way around. Neither is it always win-win or lose-lose.
Change happens slowly, but you need to ensure it happens surely.
Not a switch. Not an identity makeover you toggle on January 1st.
But we still treat it like one. Especially with new year resolutions. The pressure we feel to become a new version of ourselves at the stroke of midnight, as if the calendar knows who we were or who we wish to become.
The reason change is daunting is not due to a lack of motivation or information. It fails because of rigidity.
Change is effortless when there’s awareness.
Real change doesn’t need a Ted Talk or a transformation plan. It needs attention. It needs insight.
Anthony De Mello brings this point beautifully in his book Awareness. He gives this example where a priest let’s him know his long struggle with alcohol:
“You know, I had all the information I needed; I knew alcohol was killing me, and believe me, nothing changes an alcoholic—not even the love of his wife or his kids. He does love them but it doesn’t change him.
One day I was lying in a gutter under a slight drizzle. I opened my eyes and I saw: this was killing me. I saw it and I never had the desire to touch a drop after that.
I’ve even drunk a bit since then, but never enough to damage me. I couldn’t do it. Still can’t.”
That’s change, not driven by willpower, or podcasts, or self-help books—but by insight.
He didn’t will himself to change. He saw clearly. That awareness released the rigidity. And his reality changed.
And here’s the best part: you don’t need rock-bottom. You don’t need a new year. You don’t need a crisis. You don’t even need a reason to change.
You need a skill.
Because change can be learned, cultivated, practiced. Just like a life skill.
And that’s exactly how it’s treated within Mindful Productivity.
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“Awareness releases reality to change you.” – Anthony De Mello
Change, in Mindful Productivity, is viewed through the lens of skill.
Skills like…
- Socratic Unlearning
- Assertive No Practice
- NOVA New Year Resolution
- Weekly Stretch Thinking
- Portfolio of Planet-Friendly Habits
… that are a simple and flexible way to help awareness become the agent of change. Without guilt, force, or failure.
Nikhil Kabadi 