'"The question isn’t whether we can change; it’s whether we’re willing to do what change requires."— James McPartland
I want to share something vital about change—something I've seen time and again in my work with leaders:
Change isn't just about wanting something different—it demands a powerful WHY and a sense of clarity about what’s worth fighting for. Because change is hard. Really hard. We need a strong WHY to fuel the willingness that drives real change.
I work with CEOs who tell me they want to transform their organizations. But when we dig deeper, we often find they lack a clear vision—the kind that must come from the leader at the helm, the kind that must come from within. No consultant, advisor, or coach can give that to you. They can guide you, but it’s YOU who has to do the work.
Your vision must be bigger than you, and it has to reach into the future in a way that pulls you forward, despite the discomfort.
Change becomes real when you get crystal clear that what you want cannot be achieved by playing the same game you're playing now. It’s like trying to win a chess match using checker moves—it simply won’t work. You need a clear vision, a strategy to execute it, and the grit to carry it out.
And with that grit to change comes pain. Not the kind of pain you push through with gritted teeth, but the kind that comes with a high degree of dissatisfaction—enough angst that the difficulty of changing outweighs the fear of the uncertainty that will inevitably accompany it.
Change will ask you to face the truth about where you’ve been in denial. It will require you to ask yourself:
What pain do I need to address?
What am I pretending not to know?
What conversations am I avoiding right now… with myself? With my team? With my family?
These avoided conversations are the comfortable lies we tell ourselves to maintain the status quo. They’re the invisible chains keeping us exactly where we are.
When someone tells me, "I’m willing to change, but I don’t know how," I recognize it immediately as an escape clause in the contract they've written with themselves—a permission slip to avoid the fear and pain of real change. It's like taking an aspirin for a broken arm—it might dull the pain temporarily, but it doesn’t fix the underlying problem.
What’s really happening is our unwillingness to face our unwillingness because we’re afraid to let go of control and deal with the unknown.
Said with no filter, just raw truth: There’s no such thing as "trying" to change. You either change, or you don’t. "Trying" is just wanting credit for something you never truly intended to do in the first place.
People don’t stop growing because they’ve hit some innate limit. They stop because they stop practicing—or because they never started in the first place. The question isn’t whether we can change; it’s whether we’re willing to do what change requires.
So, are you ready to have that meeting with yourself? Are you really willing to change? Because there’s no trying. There’s only doing—or not doing.
The choice, as always, is ours.
Mac 😎
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