March 2017
With the shifting of the seasons and spring peaking around the corner, the theme of change has been running through my mind these past few days. It seems like such a simple, straightforward concept, but why does appear to hold a heaviness that many of us tend to avoid or shy away from? No one ever said that change was bad, or even good, so it begs the question; how do you view change in your life? Is it positive or negative? Does it depend on the situation or experience or does it appear black and white to you?
I love when I look through old photos from the past and observe how much I’ve changed to become who I am now. It opens up the opportunity to reflect on who I was at that time, what I thought was important and how I chose to express my thoughts and emotions. I start to laugh when become aware of these things and wonder why I decided to share them. It dawns on me though, that when I was living in those moments it didn’t seem outlandish or weird to me then, so why do I feel the need to disregard or feel bad about it now? Anything we experience in life happens in order for us to grow as human beings to become our most authentic selves. We learn what we need and unlearn the things that we don’t. The laughable part that we tend to forget sometimes is that life is always in constant flux. Even if it’s slow or small, it is always moving and shifting no matter how hard we try to keep things constant. One minute we think we have it figured out, the next…
BAM.
Life shifts yet again and we’re back to square one with no solutions to any of our concerns or problems. Like a roller coaster ride that never ends. Some parts are easy (even enjoyable), where you feel like you are coasting on a breeze; but some parts make you feel the uncomfortable, vulnerable, sick to your stomach sensation that can become down-right terrifying and out of control. If peace is what you are looking for in your life, the acquirement of what you seek is solely determined by your reactions to the ups and downs that occur. When the world is consistently morphing into different forms, it proves challenging to keep up with what life hands us every day. If we can begin to accept that change is inevitable in our daily routines, we can create the ability to learn to embrace all of what we experience in life.
I’ve come to learn that I have this great desire to rise up and choose to change who I am in order to elevate to the next level. I think one of my biggest fears is getting to a place in my life where what I am doing on a daily basis isn’t helping me to develop myself. As if I am running on a hamster wheel, where no matter how hard I try, my feet are always grounded in the same place. Stagnant. Stale. Boring. This urge to keep changing like a chameleon has given me the insight to some less positive characteristics about myself; such as the inability to stay in one place or environment for an extended period of time before I want to try something new and become inconsistent with the things I do. Even so, this realization also gives me the clarity I need when making decisions to change the direction of how my life unfolds. If we start to strip away the misconception that change is negative, we are left with the possibility to believe that change is something positive (and potentially necessary) for our survival.
One of the most interesting and exciting things happen in the parts of your life that are unknown to you. An eagerness builds inside of you that makes you feel ecstatic one minute and terrified the next and you become confused on which one you need to feel. If you learn to have integrity with yourself, you will never look at the idea of evolving yourself as something to be afraid of. As you change who you are, you should naturally find it necessary to change what you are doing with your time and the environment you surround yourself with. We must remember we hold all of the power to decide what we change in the course of our lives. Learn to let go, step out of your comfort zones and live up to the potential you have within yourself to become all that you are capable of being.
And finally, understand that you are (and have always been) exactly where you need to be to get to where you want to go.