Change is inevitable, what you choose to do with it makes all the difference.
Appeared in Cityview Magazine, Vol. 42, Issue 5 (September/October 2026)
For most of my life, I strongly resisted change. If I felt I’d earned something, whether actually or just emotionally, I decided it was mine, and nobody was going to tell me otherwise. That instinct came from things that happened long ago, things I should have resolved years before they started quietly running my life from the background. So when it was suggested that I cut back on the wine, I heard the words, but I refused to hear what was actually being said underneath them.
Over the past couple of months, I finally listened and stopped drinking. I walked away from processed sugar. I let go of most bread, not because gluten is some modern villain, but because I finally admitted what that bread was actually doing: quietly turning into sugar, quietly turning into weight, quietly turning into excuses.
I started walking, moving, showing up for my own body instead of just my business. On paper, that’s a list of things I gave up. In practice, it’s the opposite. I didn’t lose alcohol, I gained a massive amount of clarity. I didn’t lose sugar and bread, I gained a real relationship with food instead of a dependent one, and in the process lost a lot of weight. I didn’t lose an evening ritual, I gained the version of myself who’s actually present for the people in my life who matter and who count on me. And for all the times I let anyone down, I am profoundly sorry, and I hope they’ll find it in their hearts to forgive me.
Somewhere in there I had an “aha” moment. Deprivation flipped into opportunity, and once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it anywhere. An eye-opening the likes of which I have never experienced. I’m sharing this with you in the hope that, through my experience, you might see your own change through a different lens.
Here’s the uncomfortable part. It is astonishingly easy to spot what someone else needs to change. Their bad habits. Their broken promises. Their blind spots. We see it instantly, and we get frustrated when the people we love won’t just fix the obvious things. What’s harder, much harder, is turning that same clarity on ourselves. There’s a particular kind of hypocrisy in demanding growth from everyone but the man in the mirror. I’ve been guilty of it, and I suspect many of you have as well.
I want to be precise about something, because precision matters here. This isn’t about removing a person, a relationship, or love itself. It’s about removing the behavior standing between you and the people who deserve your best self. Those are not the same things, and confusing them is how good people talk themselves out of good changes. When someone who loves you has been trying to tell you something, sometimes out loud, sometimes in silence after they’ve stopped saying it, the message underneath is rarely “change or I’m gone.” It’s usually simpler and more generous than that — you matter to me, I want you in my life, but something is getting in the way, and I hope you will fix it.
That’s not an ultimatum. Not at all. Instead it’s an invitation. And invitations deserve a response. The first step is listening, both to the person asking and to the voice inside you that’s probably already screaming the same thing back at you. Mine was — and for the longest time, I simply refused to listen or act, even when I knew it would be best for me and everyone else in my life. That’s fear talking, plain and simple: the fear of losing something that, in truth, was hurting me.
When you remove something that’s been quietly costing you, you don’t just make room for health or discipline. You make room for integrity, for your actions to finally catch up to your words. Anyone can say they will change their behavior, but the proof is in consistency of your actions, and that’s proven only one way: with consecutive days of choosing them, and the version of you they deserve, over the thing that’s been getting in the way. Say your health matters, then eat like it. Say the relationship matters, then behave like it. That’s the whole game. Walk the walk, or stop talking.
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