Change Is
Hello dearest! Embrace change, it saves you a lot of grief in the long run. Think back to something you were absolutely sure was a bad thing. You were certain nothing good would come, you were dragged into it kicking and screaming (inside or outside)… How do you feel about it now? We run from change like we run from a mugger. Things being different than they are and us not controlling how and when the change occurs is fear inducing, to say the least. We are creatures that get attached quickly and let go reluctantly.
Change is inevitable, I am sure you know this, yet it doesn't make it less jarring. Change means going from what is known to what is unknown. It is scary. We like to believe that we have control over our future. We like to believe that we are in charge of what is next. We set up our lives so that we know what is going to come next. We have 401K's, IRA's, Social Security, mortgages, etc. We buy things for future use, we save information for future telling. We believe that we will be able to dodge the unexpected by planning properly. What we are really doing is trying to deny the inevitable. Change is going to come no matter how much planning, hiding, digging your heels in you do. Change is constant and you won't be able to stop it from happening. You also won't be able to plan accordingly or to lessen the amount that you experience. You get exactly the amount of change your soul needs for growth and exactly the amount you can handle.
So why do we resist change so? Don't we all have experience with it being for the better in the long run? I would wager a bet that you have more positive results to unexpected change than negative, if you were to truly take away the judgment that change is bad. When we let go of the unknown equalling the scary we can begin to see change as the universe's way of gifting us growth. We get über comfortable with routine, things we know, even if we aren't getting the same charge off of it as when it was new. We refuse to let go of things regardless of their usefulness. We become attached to things, people, situations, places. Our ability to remember can be what holds our complex social structure together and what can also be our downfall when it comes to handling change. We remember how things were. We remember in a way that makes the memory better than the actual experience (or worse depending on what we are remembering) which makes it even harder to process change or let go of the past. Another block to accepting change is our desire to want it to happen the way we think it should… as if we know best for how things need to go. History shows that humans are profoundly stupid in most every way.
If there is something that is going to happen and there is nothing you can do about it, what is the best way to respond? What do you think? I hear from any and everyone that it is hard to change patterns of behavior or the way you think or react to a situation. I say it isn't. If you decide to accept change being growth and growth being necessary; if you understand and totally get that you will have to deal with change no matter how much resistance you exert, you can make your response to change have a less harsher impact than it otherwise would and has had. When you are better able to accept change as a normal part of life you are better able to receive the information, I like to call them gifts, that lies within the change. You can almost completely side-step devastation and move directly to appreciation. The more you resist that which you are given the more it shows up in your life… that includes the things that pull you towards forward movement.
How can you embrace something in your life that was unexpected but isn't going away just yet. What in your life is changing that would be less awful if you accepted it for what it was… without taking it personally? The better you get at allowing things in your life to move and grow the easier your life becomes.
xo
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