They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. — Andy Warhol

They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

Author: Andy Warhol

Insight: We're all guilty of this: waiting for time to fix things. A bad habit will fade eventually. A difficult relationship will improve on its own. Our procrastination on that project will somehow resolve itself. But Warhol points at something we already know but keep forgetting—time is neutral. It doesn't care about us or our situations. It just passes. The uncomfortable truth is that time is actually the worst excuse we have. It lets us feel like we're being patient and wise when we're really just stalling. A year from now, you won't magically become more disciplined, more confident, or more skilled unless you do the actual work in between now and then. The clock doesn't do that for you. What makes this insight stick is that it cuts through the "everything will work out" optimism we use to avoid hard choices. Sometimes things do need to sit for a while—grief, anger, confusion. But there's a difference between letting something settle and hoping it disappears. Real change asks you to show up and do something, even if it's small. The strange freedom in accepting this is that once you stop waiting for time to be your therapist or your life coach, you're finally free to actually change your life.

Source: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again), p. 75, 1975