Sometimes it is the lack of change that is the writing on the wall of the coming tides. Like the silence before the storm. Isn't it human to want to keep things as they are? Unless you surf, why go look for stronger winds and bigger waves, right?

Most of us fear the unknown and if I'm very honest, I'm not too keen on too many waves either. But I have come to believe that people, like standing water, go stale without the occasional swell to push us out of our comfort zone into uncharted, freshwaters.

While one could argue, if one knew my occupation, that of all people, I should know how to deal with changes, life events, and how to discover and exploit the upsides to any situation, I'm also just human, with triggers and associations just the same. Yes, I need time to adjust and can respond in any manner of unenlightened ways, depending on the severity of the incident. However, it is the nature of people to need time to deal with a shock.

This initial shock doesn't become any less with experience, training, knowledge, or age. We might recover quicker, we might respond more adequately, compared to earlier in life but a shock remains a shock nonetheless. And after half a life, I can conclude it is for the better that way. We all need a wake-up call every once in a while, although we can still resent the sound of the alarm clock with a passion.

Usually, it is some phone call, on an ordinary rainy night, with news that instantly creates a rift in our shared reality. Suddenly, next to your plans for that moment, that week or month, there is loss, upheaval, mayhem. Sensations set in that seem almost surreal. As if a bomb had literally dropped and we are still shell-shocked. Voices seem distant, the whole world seemingly muted as we are overwhelmed with emotions, thoughts, and the world as a whole.

This one horrible thing has happened but the world just goes about its business. Cars drive through the streets, people on their way to work. Seemingly oblivious to the horror taking place behind these windows.

Maybe, the shocking event was not of a sudden nature, instead, it had been brewing for months or years; goals we had not set, boundaries we had ignored, words not spoken, deeds not done, responsibilities missed or neglected.

Then, one sudden morning, the pressure cooker bursts, and we, as the proverbial frogs from the rather gruesome 'frog in cooker' metaphor, had been stewing in it for quite a while. But as said, most people don't like change, even for good. We rather stay in our ever warmer bathing water, swimming another circle instead of owning up to the inevitable; shit will change, whether we like it or not. You will change, whether you like it or not, the only question is, what do we change into?

There are even those that, after being lent a hand out of the boiling water, dive right back in, as if to check if the situation was really that unsatisfying. In my case, I jumped back in thrice.

We are creatures of habit. We like predictability. We know the job we have doesn't fulfill us and will burn us out in the long run but hey, it's a steady income, security. And thus, like the frog, we stay in the water that is getting ever warmer. Rather than choosing to commit to working with our passions and talents.

The same with our relationships, even if we only feel worse when we return from certain friends or acquaintances, we stay. We are so used to being around them or feel so empty without them that we just fail to recognize that we have grown apart.

I am telling you this as a personal coach with 20 years of experience coming winter. I have guided many people through every kind of change imaginable. Never once were the life events they needed coaching for, met with cheers and rejoicing by the coachee in question. But also never once did the change failed to bring new circumstances that, once harnessed, would give a whole new outlook on life.

It is only when looking back, sometimes only after many years, one can entertain notions of irony, maybe even some humor about the situation. However, most of us keep mourning the loss, with all attention on that what is now lost to us, thereby unable to see the gains we have made at the same time. Framing ourselves from the perspective of this loss. I am here to make the case to welcome and embrace change. Change is inevitable. To try to prevent change is to be a dam in a river. A ball we press under the waterline.

Not only does this cost a great deal of energy, but it also leads to an unavoidable breaking of the dam. We need our attention and energy to be that dam, to hold that ball underwater. To keep the doors closed shut in fear of what lies behind. But we also hold back all that is good as well, when we stay rigid like that.

Kennedy said, not long before he was assassinated: "Those who make peaceful evolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable." I am now sure this is applicable not only in our society but also in ourselves.

I find evidence all around us. People neglecting or repressing their nature, climbing in a slippery pole, one can hold for a certain amount of time. But soon either attention starts waning, our muscles get tired, other incidents happen and before we know it and against all intentions and our good nature, we gave in to the pressure. The dam broke, the ball popped up, the resistance is broken, as all resistance once will. Now we did it again, enforcing the underlying belief that we are just that user, abuser, weak, and a bad person.

To resist is to violently oppose. It is to be the rock instead of the reed, taking the full force of the river head-on instead of moving with the force, like an emotional aikido master of sorts. This leads to extra stress, exhaustion, depression, and burn-out. The very erosion of our intentions and to the very results we tried so dearly to prevent. We had lost sight of all important things, such as our goals and dreams and we became even more rigid and judgmental, for all the matters we forbid ourselves we shall not permit others.

Anyone who has tried to kick a habit will testify that 'preventing the habit' or 'avoiding the habit' is a slippery slope. As we see with the war on drugs, to forbid something will only push it underground, out of sight where it can fester to become a greater demon than it deserves attention for. I dare you to try not to think about a monkey in a dress. I will tell you now that unless you come up with something way more enticing than some overdressed monkeys, your mind will be riddled with primates.

One can not change a problem with the same mindset causing that situation. If you want to stop arguing, stop smoking, get out of debt, stop feeling so depressed, you are focusing on negative results. Our brain does not hear the word 'not'. It just hears arguing, smoking, debt, depression... All things we are trying to prevent and our mood changes accordingly because of the corresponding hormones that are released when we are confronted with the things we are resisting. This does not aid our recovery, it hurts it. It is similar to dangling a rotten carrot with a neon sign towards our habit, as motivation. If you want to better your life to greatness, try dangling something great, something that resonates with your soul. Just take the steps to that great goal small and easy to achieve. One does not leap onto Everest, first, we go look for climbing gear.

If I ask you what you want to do with your life and you say: "Not be a criminal, not get addicted to things, not be poor and not be sick", I would probably reply that there are some benchmarks to setting goals. They should be attainable, of course, but they should also make you tingle inside with excitement. They should be easy to visualize as they have the effect as if it is already there but most important of all: they should be positively formatted: "I want to be healthy (how would that feel?), I want to be financially independent (how would that feel?), I want to work with my passion (what would that look like)". This not only creates a landmark on our mental map to our goal, the very sensation of imagining these goals, is the way to distract from the thought monkeys we experience when we are met with adversity.

In my work, I use my personal experiences from my own life events and as a person dealing with a sensitive demeanor, I can testify that whatever the shock that rocks your world, it is never what we feared and worried about, lying awake at night, pondering our destinies.

Three times I've lost everything in my life, my love, my house, my job, my health, my friends, even family. The first two times completely to my own doing. Growing up with ASS (Autistic Spectrum Syndrome) in a time when not much was known about this, had given me the unique perspective of wondering for 30 years what made me stand out from other people. I naturally did not receive any treatment or guidance, when I was younger, which could have prevented much suffering.

I was aware I was different. Growing up in bad neighborhoods of a large city, I had to deal with surviving even getting home from school. I can remember many fights, verbally, also physically, as a response to taunts but also just to defend myself or my younger brother, as we were easy targets with our social awkwardness. I distinctly remember having a hard time staying focused on my schoolwork, maintaining contact with friends, something that seemed so easy for my peers. I often felt sad or even frustrated at a certain point, that I was not able to say what I meant.

I was so sensitive to stimuli, other people's opinions, and changes that, out of shock or hurt, I responded with anger. This made it harder to make friends when people are afraid of you. They could not see my sensitivities on the outside and I was unable to verbalize my experiences, mostly because I did not know what was different about me. We have only our experiences and as children, we haven't learned to empathize yet.

I was very young when I entered a vicious cycle of feeling estranged and left behind, feeling picked on and singled out by all the people I learned from and looked up to and acted out more and more. Mostly I felt very alone and vulnerable as if at any moment my world could come down. And when I undergo more than one life event at a time, sometimes still there is a feeling of being inept, speechless, I guess one never really loses conditioning's obtained that young, we can only embrace them.

I was almost six foot at age fourteen and looked strong and older, mentally however I was not that developed yet. Not only due to the ASS, but also because of stress in our home. My mother, 'gifted' with the same hereditary conditions, would respond to my antics with outbursts of anger, which in turn caused me to act out more and more and by the time I was fourteen, the situation started to get out of hand. After a particular argument with my mother, I can't remember what it was about, they were a daily occurrence, I was so frustrated. Why did I never have the right words? Why would the right things to say, only come long after they were useful?

And I made a vow, from now on I will always be able to explain myself. The amazing part was that it worked. What I felt, how I experienced anything from a speed trip to an orgasm, I could verbalize the event in understandable terms, but with that power came a dark side, the curse of the know-it-all, combined with a 'last word' fetish. Not the most pleasant of traits in diner table conversation.

I spent the ten years after that spewing, no, inundating people with my version of 'the truth', battling their 'inferior' belief system and matching arguments with any means necessary, including but not limited to manipulation, stretching truths, ad hominem attacks as long as to emerge victorious from this verbal show of force. As you can see I had cultivated a very nice compensating narcissism to more easily ignore the feelings of worthlessness that I really felt.

Years later I would understand that my self-esteem was non-existent, I had been traumatized by all the yelling and screaming and perpetually being blamed for all that went wrong. With all we know now about guiding children with ASS, most of my problems would have been easily preventable, alas, we did not know much about these things in the seventies.

I had developed a liking for any substance that could numb me, weed, speed, alcohol, later MDMA, and cocaine, there isn't a drug I haven't tried, to be honest. Anything to sedate the feeling of not belonging, being different, the emptiness, and the subsequent stress and arguments. So gaming, sex, and all other ways to 'fill the void' were thrown into the mix. Problems began to compound, a cycle of depressions turned into fits of rage, so I left my parents' home, to live in an even bigger city.

Soon after that, my life started to unravel. The first of the three losses. Without getting too deep into the details of the three times I lost all, for purposes of time, I can state that especially after the second loss event, thoughts of suicide were a regular occasion. It felt much easier to not have to struggle for all that seemed to come so naturally to others. Twice I came close to ending it all. For the sake of being complete I will share one of the biggest eye-openers of my life, please forgive me for not delving too deep into all the bygones of my life, it has little to no relevance for the point I'm trying to convey.

It was on my thirtieth birthday when the truth hit me like a hammer. My partner at the time and I were invited for a dinner with all our friends. My brother and I shared a group of friends and we were going out that night to celebrate our friendship, so I thought. We have a turbulent relationship, with both being stubborn and impossible (think of two Sheldons, except without the geniality).

I felt my brother was a bit moody that particular day, just grunting some acknowledgment of my presence upon greeting him. My mood was not of a 'sunshiny' quality either suffering from a crippling depression at the time, that I was battling with full-time cannabis use. A lost cause any way you look at it and looking back, something had to give. Anyway, my brothers' failure to greet me in a manner of my pleasing led me to some resentment that was soon 'coloring' the atmosphere for the entire group.

My preoccupation with my own mood and wishes had made me overlook my brothers' new jacket, he was very proud of it and had hoped for a compliment. Tiny remarks led to bigger ones, someone mentioned how nice the jacket was, which led me to my now infamous and immortal words: "A nice jacket indeed, a bit disappointing is the dick that is in it".

Not only my brother responded with anger, the entire party turned into a nightmare in which I was perceived as the culprit, again. I did not understand why everyone was so angry at me for an argument between two brothers. Which in turn led me to respond in the only way known to me: anger. Why am I the bad guy here? So I got up and left. My partner all the while trying to make me stay, which led to even more anger on my part. I just wanted to go home. As I said, for big lessons and real eyeopeners one needs big waves or a deep cliff. Well, this particular cliff was my stop and had my name on it.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, was the fact that my brother had been arranging the dinner as a decoy for my birthday and had been organizing this for months, as a way to say he loved me and have me surrounded by my friends in a time of great sadness. My partner of course knew this and tried to get me to the party without blowing the cover.

In the end, she had to spoil the surprise to make me go. Telling me that all the people I know are waiting for us at the place of the party. The feelings of disgust about myself, shame, still mixed with feelings of being the victim on top of my weed-marinated depression made it even harder to face everyone. Everybody knew what happened. No way to weasel out of this one. I could only go and own up to my behavior.

What I met that night, after apologizing for my remarks and with newfound insight into how I have more impact on my social environment, for my part in the stress I can cause other people, was a warm bath of love. I remember crying the entire night and I made another vow. I would get help and face my demons of the past to never let my feelings of inadequacy waste another life moment. A vow I never regretted to this day.

And I got help, I learned I have a fine blend of ADD, HSP, ASS combined with the trauma of all the things that went wrong in my life. I met a trainer that helped me deal with my self-image and showed me ways to deal with my thoughts and feelings, to learn to love myself.

Security. A word so promising of safety, lulling us into a false sense of it. The men that have perished because of this, history books are filled with them. I declare the ideas of security and stability as the biggest threats to human happiness.

It was Lucebert a poet from the Cobra movement who said: "Anything of value is defenseless". To accept the frailty and fleetingness of sensations of happiness has tremendous freedom in it. Happiness is then no longer a benchmark we need to meet but merely an emotion as any other. Just a peak experience that can be the icing on the cake instead of the foundation for the cake.

People seem to believe that happiness is a condition for life and continue to chase the high, consuming all in their hedonistic paths in an effort to fill an unnecessary void. It is not. The pursuit of happiness can be the very thing keeping us from ever being happy. For we always will compare coming moments of bliss to earlier ones or those of others.

I think the moments of greatest human happiness, as a species, are not found in this century or the one before. I think we need to go back to a time when we lived with nature, we're close to our friends and family, connected to our roots and our environment. Before we started regarding our bodies as dirty, sexuality as sickness, and still saw all things human as natural. Before we started imprisoning ourselves in concrete boxes, adopting morals that were not our own, slowly losing our connection to the land. When we still had a simpler life, with direct consequences for our actions; we found no food so tonight we are hungry. Tomorrow we find food, we have a party. Life has gotten very complicated in a short time, from an evolutionary standpoint.

What we see in healthcare is larger and larger groups that drop out, can't handle the pressure, all the expectations. People who all think they are inadequate for not being able to cope with the rat race. I can tell you to be successful and happy in our current social climate, takes a certain amount of sociopathy and a large dose of myopia to not be concerned with what others think, expectations, to be able to make decisions that could destroy others and just go home and not let that affect you. It is for this reason that sociopaths and psychopaths dominate the upper echelons of big business and big state.

Accept your fallibility, embrace your vulnerability, dare to be wrong, make the wrong choice which will always be infinitely better than making no choices at all. Accept all things natural, an urge is just an urge once you learn to ride the wave, instead of crashing into them. Simply let go of resistance, embrace all that is you, good and bad, dark and light.

It is the fate of the writer that each reader has the god-given right to take away from a story what they will. If you would permit this old coach to share one wisdom, one piece of advice, at risk of sounding boomer; It is never the calm waters that teach us how to captain the seas.

We can look at the waves in fear, trying to steer clear of them but waves are not only inevitable, they are the force behind our growth, the fuel for our journey. They push us to new places and behavior, thus expanding our minds. Feelings of loss, which change usually represent, are the crucible, if you will, in which our character is fortified, our talents honed and for some, a destiny discovered.

So looking back, knowing all my suffering could be prevented, would I change one thing? All the experiences now enable me to, for instance, empathize with others on many levels, verbalize pain that others can't, reach people where they are, estimate what my clients could need, and provide them with bespoke assistance that is tailored to their needs.

My particular set of skills made me into a Temple Grandin for people that lost their voice, are disenfranchised, and see no way out. So no, this I would not change for all the money in the world. I just accepted it. Another reason for not wanting anything different is that I now have a son that is diagnosed with ASS, similar to mine, who I could help express himself from very early on.

Remember what I said about being able to laugh years later, because of how ironic some situations have been? Consider then that my son is not my biological son and was born before I knew him. The universe has strange ways to make it all work out in the end.

Do not be a creature of habit, just change and be a creature of waves and ride them, behind them lies your destiny. I wish you many big waves! May they bring you to the destinations of your dreams.

Photo by Guillaume Hankenne via Pexels (https://instagram.com/guihankenne)

If you suffer from depression, need help kicking a habit, or are thinking about harming yourself, please consult a mental health professional in your country of residence. Things will change for the better, once you ask for help.