Embracing Change

Vision and focus

Vision and Focus are the two most important factors in ensuring that you bring about directed and proactive change.

If you arrive at a railway station and want to get on a train, you need to decide where you want to go to before you buy your ticket. You may decide to stop off at other places en route, but the chances are, having bought that ticket, you will be motivated to stay on track and reach your ultimate destination. Buying a ticket for the wrong place will lead you to interesting new territory, but will distract from helping you to reach your original goal.

The same is true in life. If you do not know where you are headed, you will not know where you are going, and nor will you know when you have arrived. I will show you how to refocus on your future and enhance your creativity in order to clarify your vision.

Wherever there is change, there is choice. Your attitude to change is linked, inevitably, to that choice. You have the power to choose how you decide to arrive at change. You have the ability to deal with whatever it is you are currently facing and living through, as well as planning effectively, step by step, for an empowered future.

Pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity.

The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.

Winston Churchill

I CAN’T BECAUSE… 

… I”M SCARED 

It is normal to feel fearful when faced the change. The process of change is often accompanied by a period of disruption and acute discomfort and therefore there is reluctance for people to embrace it fully. They don’t want to embrace their new emerging reality because it means letting go of their old familiar reality; this is true no matter how uncomfortable they are. They are afraid of the change because it often appears as chaos, and the future is an unknown and uncertain prospect.

The person who recognizes himself (or herself) to be an agent of change, will realize that he is taking part in an ongoing process and will understand that to progress as an individual, to realizes fully to changes that are happening, he will need to integrate the change.

We have to keep moving, keep changing, in order to remain as we are; but at the same time we have the capacity to bring about profound change – provided we go “with” the process, trust the universe and sit with, and assimilate, our ever-changing state. This is not the same as being fatalistic or complacent, far from it. This is a process of active engagement with the change as it occurs.

If you look your fear in the face, and sit with it for a while until it is familiar, you can transform it into its equal and opposite: COURAGE. Courage does not mean the absence of fear; courage is the state of looking fear in the face and having the faith and the belief in the change process to see it through.

… I”ve just got to do this first

Procrastination means not bringing about the change you desire, by constantly escaping into excuse pathways in order to avoid doing what it is you are supposed to do. However, by avoiding the change that you want, you are changing anyway, and you are changing towards the probability that the change you want will not happen.

Procrastination is a decision to change away from the goal you desire. We procrastinate for a number of reasons, not through any lack of will or lack of knowledge but simply because the vision that we have created for ourselves is not clear or compelling enough to oblige us to continue towards it. It can be related to fear of success – in which the fear of the results of the change brings about the change towards non-change – one of the most dangerous syndromes in which the brain can become involved.

If you know that you procrastinate, be aware that procrastination can camouflage itself very neatly in a variety of cunning ways. It loves domestic chores: cooking, cleaning, shopping, letter writing – all the tasks you normally avoid become your main priorities. It is philanthropic. It loves doing favors for others, and will convince you that your neighbor/son/friend – even your worst enemy – cannot survive a moment longer unless you offer or agree to help them in some way.

But to see it as separate from you is of course to feed the worst aspect of procrastination. It may feel as if there is someone else”s voice inside your head telling you what to do, but in fact you are just avoiding responsibility. You are the Manager of your mind. So, to beat procrastination keep your Plan in mind at all times. Commit your goals and priorities to paper.

The next time the voice in your head offers you a distraction from the task in hand, remember you are your own inner coach. You are talking to yourself.

Grown to perfection Story

I was once told a story by a First Nation American Indian Chief who had become a modern American super-executive in a computer company. He had spent a lot of time with disadvantaged kids on the reservation, many of whom had been abused on all levels. They were very depressed about who they were and believed they could never achieve anything in life.

He would take them to a weed patch or flowerbed and show them the flowers. He would show them the dandelions, and the roses, and ask: “Which one of these beautiful flowers is not perfect? You, my children, are just the same as the flowers. You are beautiful; you are perfect.”

I would add that you can choose whether to pick off your own petals; you can choose whether to water (nurture) yourself; you can choose whether to damage or destroy other flowers – but at the moment, you are a flower, and you are perfect as you are right now. You decide what happens to the flower.