Change is Scary and Easier Than You Think

I snipped my necklace today.

I’d bought it in France with my mom, a placeholder necklace to wear whilst swimming in the lake to replace the silver locket I usually wear on (soggy, damp, smelly) dry British land (I like my neck to look pretty in case a hungry Robert Pattinson vampire passes by).

That image, that holiday, that chapter of my life (one of the best. I’ve bookmarked each of those pages and pressed tiny french flowers in between them) was in 2019. I’ve been wearing that necklace for a damn long while now. It’s old, fraying, worn, discoloured, probably stinky, and ready to metamorphose into its next life as a tiny tatty little jewel I’ll probably never get round to binning because I’m a sentimental hoarder.

I’d wanted to swap it out for a new one for ages but, well, I just didn’t. I wrote it off as procrastination, as a “job for tomorrow,” as a trivial task that could wait just a little bit longer. But deep down I knew that wasn’t it. Not at all. Quite the opposite, really. Such a seemingly small thing was actually weighed down by such a colossal concept:

Change.

Changing my necklace meant changing my life

I wasn’t just removing a piece of string wound around my neck, I was removing something that had accompanied me on my first ever Real Life™ date. I was getting rid of something that was there when I received my master's degree. I was taking off something that had featured on screen with me whilst I auditioned for a TV show from my own bedroom, something that had my cats had nibbled on whilst I napped, something that lived through an entire apocalypse, sat inches above my heart.

That cheap jewel and fraying string tied me to those memories. Or at least, that’s what I had fixed in my head, which is why I just couldn’t take it off, swap it over, replace it with a new one. Not yet. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.

Because changing anything — your necklace, your mind, your life — can be terrifying.

By definition it means “an act or process through which something becomes different.” And different tends to mean unfamiliar. And unfamiliar is like waltzing into your own home to be greeted by your unfamily. As in: a bunch of absolute strangers sprawled out on your sofa and snacking on that tube of Texas BBQ Pringles you were saving to watch with Deadpool 2 tonight.

Outfrigginrageous. And a little scary.

So we stick with the familiar, desperately and often for a little too long, simply because it’s less unsettling. We leave our necklaces on, we stay at the demeaning job, we put up with absence of communication and affection from our partners because we’ve been with them for five years now and changing our Facebook status will just incite incessant questioning from our Aunt Jane so honestly, it’s easier to stay put, you know?

Don’t get me wrong, I’d already picked out a replacement piece of jewellery: this tiny little moon on a piece of stretchy string, bound and ready to go. But I just never got going.

Until I did. Today. When I snipped the string, saved the charm, attached it to the pencil case where the little moon once was — and is now, finally, strung right here against my throat.

I made the change.

I repeat: changing my necklace meant changing my life

It felt weird at first, itchy, just as I’d expected. As I cut it I thought it might physically hurt, like I was cutting a vein or snipping through an intestine, other parts of me that I’ve carried around for so long. It felt odd, uncomfy, almost like I was doing something wrong — but that’s true of any “change” in life.

Whether it’s something as little as a necklace switch or as large as a boyfriend swap, change can still choke you (much like my choker). Not because it’s bad, not because it’s dangerous, but because it’s difficult to snip that tether to the past. It’s not a painful experience but it’s a painful concept, the very same way the nerves of our debut West End performance of Billy Elliot are way more debilitating than the actual performance. The show isn’t scary, we always pull it off, but the idea that we might mess it up is terrifying. It’s the fear that we’re going to make the wrong decision, we’re going to make a fool of ourselves, we’re going to make a mess — these are all symptoms of change. Which is why change is so paralysing.

Until we make it.

Until we make that change and prove to ourselves that, whatever it is we do end up making, at least we’re still making something. If we never face change, if we never embrace it, then life becomes stagnant. We fall to a halt. We remain stuck in a lifetime that’s less than what we deserve.

You see, change is about rerouting your life when the pathway you’re currently on becomes a little dark, dull, dingy. It doesn’t disregard the journey you’ve already made — it simply sets you on a prettier one. If there’s some part of your life that’s damaged, worn, fraying, old, no longer good for you, then scrap it. It’s just baggage. Weighing us down, wearing us out, stopping us from giving our energy to better things. But these tiny moments of change release us. Ready us for something new, something better, something moon-shaped and tiny.

The things you remove from your life don’t have to be forgotten. Change doesn’t stop that chapter from existing, from us looking back on it. It’s simply us sticking a full stop at the end of it and beginning a new one. It’s us placing the past into a pretty pastel memory box beneath our bed, beside the Christmas decorations and freeing up ourselves to acquire something new, something lighter, something else to carry along our journey.

That’s what I did today.

TLDR: How to change your mind, your perspective, your life

Readjust your definition of change. That’s all you have to do. There is no hack, no remedy, no way around it. It’s not something you need to avoid, nor something you need to struggle to implement into your life.

Change is easy. We just expect it to be hard. But it’s not, it’s not even really “change” at all. We’re not “changing” — we’re evolving. A caterpillar and a butterfly are not separate beings. The same way a seed and tree aren’t, either. They’re just different stages of a life. Same applies to us. We haven’t changed from one thing to another. We’re just growing into ourselves. We’re becoming who we are.

So rewrite what change means to you and you’ll find that suddenly it’s so much easier to:

• Change your mind: because you’re considering multiple options in order to seek out what’s best for you.

• Change your perspective: because you’re freely able to embrace things from a variety of angles knowing that it doesn’t diminish your own perspective, but simply enhances it.

• And change your life: because you’re replacing the bad, and bringing in the better.

Change does not ruin your life — it makes it. So get on out there and make it right back.

(*Michael Jackson voice*) make that change.

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Oh hey, whilst you’re here: why not put the “em” into your “emails” and lob your name onto my mailing list for weekly em-bellishments on my rose-tinted, crumb-coated lens of life. It’s the equivalent of the reduced section in the supermarket (low value Weird Crap™ that you didn’t know you needed).