Follow this rule. Change your life.

Here's a rule to consider when living your life:

At least once a year (and much more often if possible), you should try something that is:

1. New
2. Difficult
3. At least a little frightening
4. Reduces the amount of time spent watching television
5. Has the potential of becoming something meaningful - a new hobby, a new career, something that you can be proud of - if done well

Change in our lives is essential, and yet so many of us avoid it at all costs. An enormous percentage of the population slowly settles into a daily routine that only varies if external factors forces change upon them. Days bleed into one another, with the Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays of last year resembling the Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays of the year before in almost every possible way. 

So many of us forget how good a new struggle can feel. We fail to remember the joy of self discovery that we so often experiences when we were younger. We no longer see the value of variety.   

Change keeps us youthful, interesting, happy, and motivated. Constant, relentless change is the thing that prevents us from feeling like time is flying by. It brings greater meaning not only to our lives but to the individual days of our lives.

Following my suggestion just once a year is a reasonable goal. An admittedly low bar, but a good start. The chance to bring something new into your life. The chance to change your life.  

Change can happen. Change does happen. You probably don't believe this. So let me show you this bicycle.

I am constantly confronted - most recently on my new podcast Boy vs. Girl - with the belief that large scale change is impossible, and more specifically, that large scale change cannot be started by an individual or even small group.

I am often advocating for change in macro segments of our culture. Most recently on the podcast, I have argued for the elimination of the honorifics Mrs. and Miss. 

In truth, I would like to see all honorifics eliminated, but since it's a podcast about gender and gender stereotypes, I limited the discussion to gender-based honorifics. 

I've also argued on the podcast for the elimination of heels from women's fashion. 

The response that I receive most often when advocating for these changes is that one person taking a stand will not change an entire culture. 

I don't believe this. I believe that from tiny acorns mighty oaks grow. I think that people are simply afraid to be tiny acorns, either because it's scary and difficult to be a tiny acorn in a forest of conformity or because they do not believe in or embrace change as much as they may claim.

I am fond of saying, "Be the change you want to be." This is a slight deviation of the phrase "Be the change you want to see" because I believe that all change - large or small - begins with individuals. Rather than being the change you want to see in others, be the change you want to be and allow others to see it in you.

It's a way of centering change with the self rather than worrying about the likelihood of acceptance or adoption. If I stop using gender-based honorifics or stop wearing heels, I have changed the world. It may only be my world, but that is the one I live within. 

A few years ago I attended a wedding of a friend without a tie. I took a stand against ties about ten years ago and stopped wearing them completely. I find them to be impractical, silly, and a literal (and perhaps metaphorical) noose around my neck. In the crowd of more than 200 people, I was the only man at the wedding not wearing a tie. Over the course of the evening, three different men - all strangers to me - approached me and asked how I managed to avoid wearing a tie.

I explained my position.

All three responded both positively and enviously. All three declared that they would try to wear ties less often. 

Have they followed through? I have no idea. But here's what I do know:

Neckties are on the decline. Necktie manufacturers are going out of business. The idea that you might receive a necktie as a holiday or birthday present - once a staple - is no more. 

Am I responsible? Probably not. More than likely, the casual nature of Silicon Valley companies, as well as a President who is often photographed without a tie while at work - something once unheard of - has more to do with it than me. But I was ahead of the trend. I was being the change I wanted to be. And perhaps I have even convinced some men to abandon the lunacy of the necktie.

Last year I attended an enormous gala honoring Louis CK. Part of my role in the evening was to perform onstage. I chose to wear jeans, a tee shirt, and a jacket, which was by far the most casual choice of every man who I saw at the party save one:

Louis CK. When he arrived, he was dressed just as casually as me. 

Be the change you want to be. And sometimes, a star like Louis will support you.  

Change starts somewhere. I believe that it can start in a single person, deciding that conformity for the sake of conformity is not good.  

I saw this video and realized that it is a perfect visualization of change over a fairly short period of time. It's also change that I am sure people in their own time would have never imagined. But with each transformation, a person or persons imagined the change, and as a result, the world changed.