The Choices That Keep Us Stuck

What's on my mind?

I’ve been thinking a lot about change.

The speed of change. Our desire to change. Our resistance to it. The choices we make—and the choices we avoid making.

A question I’m glad to be reminded of is:

How am I complacent in the very things I say I don’t want in my life?

When I feel stuck, how are my current choices contributing to that feeling?

A choice isn’t always a clear yes to something new or different. A choice can be a no. It can be indecision. It can be avoiding an uncomfortable conversation or continuing to respond the way I’ve always responded.

Not making a clear choice is still a choice.

It’s very possible that I’m contributing to some of my own problems without realizing it. Blaming someone or something else may be easier than examining the patterns I’ve helped create.

Last week, I met two people who said they would like to help with my work at the IWF. People have said things like this before. I’ve usually treated the comment as polite rather than sincere. I thanked them without exploring whether they genuinely wanted to help.

This time, I responded differently.

I told them exactly what I need. At this point, I need someone willing to volunteer. Every dollar I’ve made through the IWF over the last 18 months has been invested back into the farm. There isn’t money available for payroll yet.

Explaining that was uncomfortable. I’m sure my discomfort was obvious. But instead of dismissing their offers, I took them seriously. I explained what I needed and how I thought they could help.

If they do help, the next exercise may be even more difficult for me. I’ll need to explain the expected outcome and let them do the work instead of holding their hands through every step.

I’m a perfectionist. When I teach someone how to do something, I tend to explain and demonstrate it in great detail. Sometimes I can see people becoming uncomfortable as they wonder whether they’ll be able to meet my expectations.

The people who have thrived while working with me are usually the ones who can listen to my explanation, understand my preferences and then find their own way to accomplish the goal. They’re comfortable receiving my feedback, and we can have a real conversation about why their approach may be better.

I know this works because I’ve already experienced it in my insurance agency.

In some ways, I’m living two lives right now. In one, my agency runs largely without me. I’m comfortable giving the right people an expected outcome and trusting them to do the work.

In the other, the IWF means so much to me that I want to control and handle everything myself.

I want to touch every ingredient and inspect every worm. I’m serious about producing the highest-quality worm castings on the market. I’m equally serious about producing them with materials commonly considered waste.

And then, while writing this, I was interrupted by an unexpected text.

Michael, a local mushroom grower, had a truck bed full of spent mushroom blocks. Instead of unloading them somewhere for me to collect later, he offered to bring them directly to my shop.

That offer saved me a tremendous amount of time. I stopped writing, met him at the shop and accepted several hundred pounds of what I consider high-value waste.

As I move closer to producing compost at a larger scale, spent mushroom blocks are one of the consistent ingredients I plan to use. This delivery also gives me the perfect opportunity to pull a representative sample for testing. I can confirm exactly what I’m working with before incorporating more of it into my compost.

There is something fitting about that interruption.

I was writing about change, help, trust and my tendency to control every detail. Then someone offered to help by delivering an ingredient that could become part of the IWF’s growth.

Maybe being ready for change doesn’t mean abandoning my standards. Maybe it means learning to separate the standards that matter from my personal preference for how everything gets done.

Holding people accountable for an outcome is different from requiring them to follow my path to get there.

I already know people can produce excellent outcomes without following my exact process. I’ve spent years proving that in one part of my life.

Now I need to practice it in the part that feels most personal.

What do you say you want to change? And what choice—whether it looks like action, avoidance or indecision—might be helping the current situation continue?

Awareness matters, but awareness by itself doesn’t create change. At some point, we have to make a different choice.

Sometimes that choice begins by taking someone’s offer seriously, telling them what we need and giving them enough room to help.