There are countless quotes and saying about change. Some imply "People never change" others imply "Change is inevitable."
We can learn how to move, adapt and be more proactive about change or we can be doomed to believe that nothing ever changes and wonder why life keeps working against us. This is why we created change or be changed. To share ways we are taking action to create proactive change in our life.
Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, is quoted as saying "change is the only constant in life."
Over the course of 50+ years I have realized there are two significant types of change in our lives; proactive and reactive.
Proactive change is when I have a desire to make a change. This may ultimately be a reaction to something else. Reactive change is when a life circumstance or something outside our control forces a change we must now live with.
When I started my blog and going through the various steps necessary to understand who my readers would be and what they would gain from reading it became very clear to me that most of us are completely unaware of our ability to change and how to go about it. We change because of circumstances rather than changing our circumstances because of our awareness.
My day job involves planning for year end, during one of our sessions I realized there is a review process used by businesses we could apply to our personal lives. Prior to our year end planning you analyze what is working and what isn't working and through that lens look forward to end of year. This allows us to adjust our approach and our focus. Applying this same process as individuals may enable us to recognize some pivotal moments in our lives when we have allowed our circumstances to change not only the course of our life, yet also us. We have slowly allowed ourselves to be defined by the labels we hold as friend, mother, employee and then altered our own purpose and passion to become these labels which all to often we have given ourselves.
We awake and begin a rinse and repeat cycle of the previous day unaware that we have allowed our circumstances to change us. This can limit our passion for a life and for love and joy. We distract ourselves by social media, the news and gossip and spend the late nights wondering why we can't sleep. We dread the alarm clocks and want to pull the pillow over our heads and go back to sleep feeling somehow our dream life seems more fulfilling than our real life.
We stay constantly busy because if we were still and in silence for even an hour we would be forced to face our own internal emptiness. We look outside ourselves for fulfillment and spend way too much time discussing how others aren't living their lives right in our opinion all the while never owning the path we are on or the truth about our own lives.
Then one day something changes, a shift, an awareness that life is supposed to be one where we feel from the inside out. Not one in which we distract ourselves with activities and objects on the outside hoping to numb the emptiness we are feeling on the inside. In that moment we recognize the beauty life holds. We stop and reflect on moments of complete joy and happiness.
Key Take Aways;
Do you have a process to reflect on a daily or weekly basis and find the moments to be grateful?
Are you aware of where you are in your life vs where you are trying to go?
How do you recognize joy and silence the outside noise?
Have there been moments in your life you could have changed a situation rather than waiting for the situation to be change?