Change is so difficult—and so necessary

Apr 27, 2025 Sunday Nation

Which sock do you put on first, right or left?

Whichever one it is, I bet you choose the same foot, every time. Most people do. It’s the same with trousers; people tend to start with their dominant foot or leg. Once the routine is established, they stick with it. It’s an unconscious act, repeated day after day after day.

Try changing your sequence. You will find your brain becoming really uncomfortable and resisting. It is being asked to flip something that is a deep, unexamined pattern. It will feel jarring, awkward, even just plain wrong. This reveals the key problem with any kind of change: it’s really difficult, and we really resist it.

Why do we resist? It’s not the change per se being resisted; it’s the feeling of looming incompetence, discomfort, disorientation. Unconscious routines make us feel we are in control. Change disrupts that comfort.

This is why most “change management” initiatives in organizations just fail. Humans perceive any deviation from the current state as potential loss—even when the change is likely to be beneficial. We don’t see change as gain—we sense it as loss. And when emotion and intellect join forces to resist, good luck breaking through.

And yet. Change we must. For our own survival, adaptation to ever-changing circumstances is vital. Most crucially, we only grow through change. New skills, new perspectives, deeper wisdoms—they don’t come from standing still. They require movement. They demand that we stop putting the same sock on first, every time.

Change need not come as a lightning bolt. It can start life as a quiet murmur, a gentle tug at the edges of your knowing. A sense that the path you have walked on so faithfully for so long, may now be asking you to step aside. Not out of failure, but ripeness. The fruit is formed, and it must fall to give way to something new. Wisdom isn’t just in staying the course—it’s in accepting that the course has run its arc.

After all these years, the world has changed—and now, it’s time for me to move on, too.

This is my final column in the Sunday Nation.

I’ve written it week after week, year after year, for more than two decades. Through personal ups and downs, shocks global and local, highs economic and lows political—I’ve shown up here, every Sunday, to think aloud with you. It has been one of the great privileges of my life.

Writing this column for so long has meant growing through so many changes—within myself, within life itself, and alongside my readers. One of the deepest joys has been meeting people now in their settled middle age, telling me they started reading this column as teenagers. That long companionship—the privilege of evolving together across time—has made it more than worthwhile.

I’ve also outlasted a fair few editors! Yet they all shared one admirable trait: though they tucked me away in the business pages, they gave me full licence to write about whatever the hell I pleased. Some weeks, I dissected the absurdities of management or the oddities of organizations; on others, I veered off-road—into poetic rambles, philosophical detours, or spiritual musings. The freedom was exhilarating. And enormous fun.

If you’ve walked with me through these 1,146 essays—questioned with me, laughed with me, bristled at me—thank you. You gave your time and attention in a world that offers too little of both. That is no small thing, and I am very grateful for it.

But growth demands fresh thinking, and that applies to this newspaper as much as it does to me. Newer, fresher voices will appear here in my place, and I wish them every success as they shape what comes next. I will also share ideas in different ways—other places, other formats, other rhythms.

What won’t change is the signal. I will still be writing, still reflecting, still stirring things up. Just not here, and not quite like this.

If you’d like to stay in tune with my voice, please head to www.sunwords.com and drop your email address at the bottom of any page. That way, you’ll hear from me whenever a new signal goes out. I hope to meet many of you—afresh—on the other side.

So here’s the real final thought: don’t be afraid of changing the way you put on your socks. That small change may give you the courage to try bigger, more meaningful ones. Don’t stay with something just because it’s what you’ve always done. Unsettling? Sure. But maybe that little shake is where the real shift begins.

Writing is a solitary act. But over these years, it never felt lonely. You, the readers, made it feel like a conversation across time. Some of you wrote to me after many a column; others stopped me in streets or airports; many never spoke at all, but still quietly read along. I carried you with me as I wrote. Your presence was real. So as I step off this particular platform, know that I do so with deep gratitude—and the comfort of having been heard.

(Sunday Nation, 27 April 2025)