Do you find it hard to make changes? Do you find reasons for not implementing the changes you need to make in your life?

Change is never a matter of ability, its always a matter of motivation.

In 2015 the EU brought into force a new law that required home fragrance products like candles and diffusers to adhere to CLP labelling requirements. These laws were originally intended for the hazardous chemicals industry, and they dictate that all affected products must carry warning labels to show the aroma “allergens” they contain.

I always felt this was complete overkill for home fragrance products. It meant we needed to include all these horrible sounding chemical names on our labels.

We use pure organic essential oils to scent our products, and they contain lots of naturally occurring aroma compounds which we now needed to list individually. They weren’t something we added to the product; they occur naturally.

I felt that it would confuse customers about the “naturalness” of our products and so we didn’t include this information on the label.

Fast forward to the summer of 2016. Each year we exhibit at many shows in Scotland. The highlight for us is the Royal Highland Show. At the show, local trading standards officers visited our stand and picked up on the missing CLP information on our labels. They were not happy and threatened to shut our stand.

It was a scary moment and could have cost us dear. In the end, we agreed to introduce the labelling before our next show, and they agreed to let us trade out the rest of the Royal Highland.

We had a very lucky escape, and I learnt a valuable lesson.

Making changes is hard. Often we resist them for perfectly reasonable reasons. But in your heart, you know those changes need to be made. We always could make the CLP labelling change, but my lack of motivation caused us not to.

That’s the key takeaway here. If you are struggling to make a change, it’s rarely a matter of will power. I’m sure you can make the change, but for your own reasons are choosing not.

If you lack the necessary motivation. Ask yourself why? What’s getting in the way? Remove the roadblock and change will come.

Best Regards and thanks for reading