How to Actually Change
Reflections on Self-Improvement from Anthony de Mello
One of my favorite spiritual writers is the psychologist and theologian Anthony de Mello (1931–1987). I’m not sure how I initially discovered his work; it may have been from de Mello being quoted by other authors or possibly from the podcaster Tim Ferris saying he reads Awareness often. But regardless of how I came across de Mello’s work, I was delighted to see the new book A Year with Anthony de Mello recently come out.
The Paradox of Change
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change.” — Carl Rogers
In one of the passages from A Year with Anthony de Mello (which includes Roger’s quote above), he writes, “People often ask me, What do I need to do to change myself? If you are one of those people, I’ve got a big surprise for you! You don’t have to do anything.”
de Mello explains,
In fact, the more you do, the worse it gets. That’s why people are so weary. The trouble with people is that they’re busy fixing things they don’t even understand. It never strikes us that things don’t need to be fixed. They really don’t. This is a great illumination. Do you know what they need? They need to be understood. If they understood them, they’d change.
How do you do that?
According to de Mello, there are four subtle steps:
- You will first need to get in touch with all the negative feelings you’re unaware of. Lots of people have negative feelings they’re not aware of. Lots of people are depressed, and they’re not aware they are depressed. Only when they interact with joy can they fully understand how depressed they are. What negative feelings? Gloominess, for instance. You’re feeling gloomy and moody. You feel self-hatred or guilty. You feel that life is pointless and makes no sense; you’ve got hurt feelings, and you’re feeling nervous and tense. Get in touch with those feelings first.
- The second step is understanding that the feeling is in you, not reality. That’s self-evident, but do you think people know it? So stop trying to change reality. Stop trying to change the other person. Watch! Observe! Watch everything in you and around you as far as possible, and watch it as if it were happening to someone else. What does that last sentence mean? It means that you do not personalize what is happening to you. […]
- The third step: Never identify with that feeling. It has nothing to do with the “I.” Don’t define your essential self in terms of that feeling. Don’t say, “I am depressed.” If you want to say depression is there, that’s fine; if you want to say gloominess is there, that’s fine. But not: I am gloomy. You’re defining yourself in terms of the feeling. That’s your illusion; that’s your mistake. … Everything passes, everything. Your depressions and your thrills have nothing to do with happiness. Those are the swings of the pendulum. If you seek kicks or thrills, get ready for depression. Do you want your drug? Get ready for the hangover — one end of the pendulum swings to the other.
- The fourth step is: Acknowledge how we always want someone else to change so that we will feel good. But has it ever struck you that even if your wife or husband changes, what does that do to you? You’re just as vulnerable as before; you’re just as idiotic as before; you’re just as asleep as before. You are the one who needs to change. You keep insisting, “I feel good because the world is right.” Wrong! The world is right because I feel good. If at first there is a sluggishness in practicing awareness, don’t force yourself. That would be an effort again. Just be aware of your sluggishness without any judgment or condemnation. Step by step, let whatever happens to happen. Real change will come when it is brought about — not by your ego, but by reality.
Anthony de Mello has a rather direct approach, to say the least. He believes that we actually already have the wisdom to be happy and change if we could only — wake up. In his book Awareness, de Mello put it this way,
“Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs, until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. You don’t have to do anything to acquire happiness because happiness cannot be acquired.
Does anybody know why? Because we have it already.
How can you acquire what you already have?”
We don’t experience it because we’ve got to drop something, observes de Mello. “Life is easy; life is delightful. It’s only hard on your illusions, ambitions, greed, and cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels!”
Many great philosophical and spiritual teachers point to the wisdom of unlearning. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu famously said, “To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.”
What if changing (or self-improvement) is far easier than we realize?
Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
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