The Cost of Change

Hey team, alright, so here we are again for another Wednesday Workshop. We’re almost to the end of this quarter, and I wanted to talk to you about change. Sydney Howard, he was a screenwriter and playwright. He said, “Half of knowing what you want is knowing what you need to give up.” See, change costs you something; it always does. It’s not real change if it didn’t cost you anything. So, you kind of need to count your cost. Change equals growth, but it also equals the other side of growth, which is loss or giving up something. That’s what it means.

If you don’t count your costs and what you’re trying to do, then you may never accomplish what you’re trying to do. Because you cannot have your cake and eat it too. And real change doesn’t change if it didn’t cost you something, whether it be money, time, or energy. Change costs you.

If you want to lose 50 pounds, you’re gonna have to make some changes: diet, exercise. You’re gonna have to push yourself away from the table. You’re gonna have to choose not to eat that piece of cake; you’re gonna have to choose to not eat ice cream. And I know all these things because I’ve lost 50 pounds this year. I stopped eating sugar, I went on an intermittent fast, I do all those things, and I very quickly lost 50 pounds. I’d probably have lost more, but I also tore a meniscus because I was running 6.8 miles one day in June. So, I still have knee surgery to go through before I can get back on the treadmill, but I’ve been able to maintain that 50-pound loss because of diet and exercise, mostly diet.

Now, what do you want to change, and have you considered the cost of it? In order to build Northwest Enforcement, Karen and I have spent a lot of time. We gave up not taking very much of a paycheck for many years. We worked two jobs for many years. There are a number of things that we gave up: vacations, time with each other, time with family, in order to build and have what we wanted. To get the change that we were looking for, but it always cost something; it’s not free.

So, what do you want? What changes are you looking for? As you’re pursuing those things, you need to count the cost of what you’re willing to lose. Sometimes you take less of a paycheck to build a career, to learn different aspects of a job. You take the lower end so that you can build yourself up in reputation, so that you can build yourself up in knowledge and experience. What are you looking for, and what is it going to cost you? Count the cost and accomplish maybe the dreams that you set out on. Sometimes, in our instant society, we don’t see those things.

I remember as a young boy sitting and reading stories and stuff about missionaries in the late 18th and early 19th century, and hearing from them that when they would get on a ship and travel to Africa or India or somewhere like that, they put all their possessions in a casket because when they left, they had no desire to do anything except give their lives. They changed; they gave up everything, knowing that they were probably going to die in that new place. They counted their cost before they did it. That’s an amazing thing. And I’m not saying that you have to, you know, like put all your possessions in a casket to make every decision. I’m just talking about that sometimes it takes that desire to do something in order to accomplish something; you have to give something.

So until next Wednesday, always remember to be valuable because nothing less will do, and I’ll see you next week.