If you’ve ever failed at making a change happen, listen up.

During his DNC speech last week, Bill Clinton talked a lot about change.  His entire speech was practically wrapped around the theme, framing Hillary as a change maker by saying, “she’s the best darn change-maker I ever met in my life.”

I don’t know if that is true or not.

But for someone who’s been called the Queen of Change, and who built an entire career around supporting corporate transformations of epic proportion – he did say something that rang loud and true.“If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people’s lives are better, you know it’s hard and some people think it’s boring. Speeches like this are fun. Actually doing the work is hard.

”Bill got it right. Change is fucking hard.  It’s painful. It requires a lot of energy and hard work. And it always takes longer than you want it to.  

When you’re trying to change anything the only guarantee is that you won’t survive the journey unscathed.

There will be roadblocks…and detours…

and derailments.

Even your vision of the future isn’t immune to the process of change.If you’ve ever tried to change anything for yourself, for your company or the world, you know this to be true.  Bill said something else that  while I’ve thought about before, it wasn’t exactly in this way and as they say – sometimes you have to hear something 1000 times before you actually listen.

“You all know we failed (at health care reform) because we couldn’t break a Senate filibuster. Hillary immediately went to work on solving the problems the bill sought to address one by one. The most important goal was to get more children with health insurance.”

Did you catch the ah-ha in there?  Change is hard, and there is a high likelihood that you will “fail” your first time around.  BUT. And this is a big but, failing once doesn’t mean that you’ve failed once and for all.

So listen up.

That big change you’re seeking, is also seeking you.  

The journey will likely be full of challenges and setbacks, there will be points where you feel battled and bruised and I guarantee it will not give into your demands for instant gratification.

There will be times where you’ll question why it happened so easily for others – Know that It didn’t. 

You’ll have days where you consider giving up – You shouldn’t.

You’ll get frustrated at having to start from the beginning, yet again.  – Let it make you better.

You’ll secretly wonder if you have it in you to achieve what you dream of – I promise that you do. 

Bill’s words spoke to me because once again I am in the role of change maker (in both my life and yours);  and he reminded me that while change is hard, it is not impossible. And while failure is normal, it doesn’t have to be the end result.

Your end result is up to you.  

Ready to be a changemaker in your own life?  I can help. Let’s talk.