Ride the Winds of Change

Time to Embrace Change

The only constant in life is change – Heraclitus

Whether you like it or not, your life is ever-changing. It isn’t a ship stuck on a sandbar you can pile rocks around to keep it from moving. Eventually, the tide washes away the debris, and your ship shifts back into the sea. The question is, will you wait for circumstances to force your hand, or position yourself to move with the flow, and adapt to changing times?

You might believe it’s less risky to hold onto what you know rather than taking the chance of leaping into unknown perils. On this, we’ll have to agree to disagree. I’d rather have some control over the direction I decide to leap, rather than allowing the fates to choose my course.

Granted, control is a somewhat relative term here. Choosing to leap rather than waiting for the Universe to kick me in the ass doesn’t mean my path has been any smoother, or easier than someone who waited to be shoved out of the nest known as their comfort zone. It simply means I’d rather roll with the punches, and take action when I’m prompted, if for no other reason than I’ve had my share of Universal head slaps, and am disinclined to wait for the pain I know will be coming anyway.

Embrace What A Butterfly Learned

Photo – Julie Raccuglia via Flikr

Ask any butterfly if changing from a caterpillar was without its share of pain, and, if they could talk, they’d likely tell you going from worm, to goo, to delicate, winged beauty was no bed of roses…but the end result is magnificent!

Of course, not all changes in life are cataclysmic. Many are simply a matter of floating downstream and watching the scenery change. There are many stops along the way, and lessons to learn before you reach each destination. From birth to death, you’ll go through many changes. Here’s the good news: you’ll survive most, if not all of them.

Will you come through them all unscathed. Of course not! You’re not supposed to. You will, however, come through each of your life changes smarter, stronger, and wiser. Like me, you might look back at some and ask why you had to have the experience. Sometimes, you simply must go through a kind of birth canal in order to shake you free from self-limiting beliefs, and any fears you might harbor which kept you from following your life path.

Harder Lessons Clear the Way

The lessons you learn during those birth canal-like changes will stick with you like a burr in a cat’s tail, poking you a bit when you start to repeat past mistakes. Look back 5 or 10 years, and you’ll start to understand why the lesson had to be so harsh.

Perhaps you were resisting change too emphatically, or had failed to follow the path to the lesson when it was presented to you more gently. Certainly, the lesson is important, or it wouldn’t have been sent to you often enough to warrant tossing your stubborn self to the proverbial wolves to ensure you finally got it, or at least started getting it.

Every choice and decision you make as you move through the hills, valleys, and swamps of your life are made with the best information you have at the time. You can’t reach into the future to see where one choice or another will lead you, but can only exercise best judgement based on what you’ve learned, and can see before you.

The Journey Continues to Evolve

The amount of wisdom and experience you had at the ripe, old age of 18 is a grain of salt in a sea that is in constant motion. By the time you’re 30, you’ve learned that some of your choices were less than stellar, and hopefully, you’re making better ones, at least in some areas of your life.

When I was young, the biggest decision I had to make was my career path. I entered college as a Theatre Arts major, but left as a Psychology major…the first time. Although I failed my first Accounting course (those T-accounts left me lost and confused), I ultimately went on to earn a degree in accounting (where I finally mastered the mystery of the T-accounts, and used them extensively for years afterwards), and spent most of my adult life working as an accountant.

Granted, I didn’t follow my passion by any means, but I wasn’t raised to allow myself that privilege. I was meant to earn a decent living, and support myself and my family. It wasn’t until the family was raised, and I’d amassed a tidy sum in various retirement accounts that I acknowledged how unhappy I was in my chosen career. It took me another 5 or 6 years to realize it wasn’t so much the career, as the employers I attracted who were killing me slowly.

Knowing When it’s Time to Change Direction

Eventually, with a little help from one of my life’s many teachers, I realized I was doing myself a disservice by succumbing to the status quo. My soul was screaming for mercy, and I was tired of dragging myself out of bed every morning to go to a job I hated, then staying up way too late on dance nights trying to assuage my pain.

I’ve seen and enacted many changes in the last 9 years. Each year, I flow more easily into the next batch of changes. I learned no matter what happens, or how dark it gets, I get to wake to a new day, and new opportunities. I’ve gotten in my own way countless times, and watched in amazement as my butterfly wings unfolded when I stopped fighting, and started allowing.

Granted, it helps I hate stagnation and ruts. My soul weeps crocodile tears if I force it to stay in one place for too long. That might sound weird when I think about having lived in the same house for over 40 years, and rarely leave for more than 3 or 4 days, but it isn’t where I’m sitting that makes my soul cringe, but where my mind, and spirit travel.

There’s Freedom to be Found in Change

Photo – Philip Leara via Flikr

Whether it’s melding my two career paths so I have more balance between the two hemispheres of my brain, or opening to new opportunities, new people, and new ideas, the changes I continue to make are giving me a freedom I’d started to believe didn’t exist; a freedom to expand my horizons on an energetic, spiritual, mental, and emotional level.

Change doesn’t have to mean dumping your life in the toilet and starting from scratch. It often means taking what you’ve learned, and allowing it to open your world to possibilities which were once unavailable, or unimaginable. If you can imagine it, you can create a new reality for yourself, and perhaps for others too.

So dive in, and trust in your own talents and abilities to keep your head above water, even if the waves seem especially turbulent at the moment. There truly is calmer water ahead once you stop fighting the current.

Grateful for a Life of Change

My gratitudes today are:

1. I’m grateful for the lessons I’ve learned that allow me to embrace rather than resist change.
2. I’m grateful for the traumas that literally booted me out of my comfort zone, for better or worse.
3. I’m grateful for opportunities that flow when I get out of my own resistance, and my own way.
4. I’m grateful for how much my  world has expanded in the last few years, as I allow myself to love what I do.
5. I’m grateful for abundance; love, joy, change, opportunities, expansion, growth, peace, health, harmony balance, philanthropy, and prosperity.

Namaste

 

About the Author

Sheri Conaway is a Holistic Ghostwriter, and an advocate for cats and mental health. Sheri believes in the Laws of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. Her mission is to Make Vulnerable Beautiful and help entrepreneurs touch the souls of their readers and clients so they can increase their impact and their income.

If you’d like to have her write for you, please visit her Hire Me page for more information. You can also find her on Facebook as Sheri Levenstein-Conaway Author