It's hard to rock the boat when you're the one rowing it

It’s been my experience that most people like to go with the flow, keep on keeping on, go along get along, follow the leader, etc. Rocking the boat can cause waves of fear, jealousy, and resentment, so maintaining the status quo is often the safer option. Change may be the only constant in our lives, but people seem to spend a lot of time avoiding it...

It seems to be human nature to take the easy way out, and what can be easier than sticking with the familiar? If I had a nickel for every time someone told me "that’s the way we’ve always done it.” Every time I hear that refrain I wonder if the person had ever thought about ways to do "it" better, faster, cheaper, etc. Were they too busy rowing the boat? Were they lacking in confidence? Did they give up after their previous ideas got shot down? Did they really just not give a damn?

People living their own version of the movie "Groundhog Day" bother me less than people who TALK about doing things, but then never actually DO them. There's always some excuse: they didn't have the time, they didn’t have the money, they forgot, they'll do it next week, they thought that someone else would do it, so-and-so prevented them from doing it, it’s not their job, etc. Promising change and not delivering just sucks the life out of people...

Those of us who are willing to upset the apple cart in order to make the world a better place (at least in our own minds) always seem to face an uphill battle. We deal with authority figures who either try to stand in the way or take the credit, we deal with saboteurs who undermine us in an attempt to make themselves look good, we deal with passive aggressive sticks-in-the-mud who resist change out of principle, we deal with naysayers who won’t open their minds to anything new unless it involves going back to something old...

Of course change isn’t always a good thing: rocking the boat can make things worse. Some people like to make changes for the sake of “shaking things up,” but different isn’t always better. Perhaps the key to success is knowing when to rock the boat, and when to row it...