If change is so great, why is it so hard? It’s hard because it’s partly about creation
and partly about blowing up the past.
Change
challenges our present state by allowing a new vision to rush in. If we are open to change new possibilities
flow in to our lives. If we are not open
to change, we resist and fight it with all of our beings, creating great stress
and wasting energy.
None of my own words can match the following metaphor for
change that comes from Danaan Perry in Warriors of the Heart...
Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of trapeze
swings. I’m either hanging on to a
trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments in my life, I’m hurtling
across space in between trapeze bars.
Most of the time, I spend my life
hanging on for dear life to my trapeze-bar-of-the-moment. It carries me along at a certain steady rate
of swing, and I have the feeling that I’m in control of my life. I know most of the right questions and even
some of the right answers. But once in a
while, as I’m merrily (or not so merrily) swinging along, I look out ahead of
me into the distance, and what do I see?
I see another trapeze bar swing towards me. It’s empty, and I know, in that place in me
that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness
coming to get me.
Every time it happens to me, I hope
that I won’t have to grab the new bar.
But in my knowing place I know that I must totally release my grasp on
my old bar, and for some moment in time, I must hurdle across space before I
can grab onto the new bar. Each time I
am filled with terror. It doesn’t matter
that in all my previous hurdles across the void of unknowing, I have always
made it. Each time I am afraid that I
will miss, that I will be crushed on the unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm
between the bars. But I do it
anyway...
No guarantees, no net, no insurance policies, but you do it anyway
because somehow, to keep hanging on to that old bar is no longer on the list
of alternatives. And so for an
eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the
dark void of “the past is gone; the future is not yet here.” It’s called transition. I have come to believe that is the only place
that real change occurs. I mean real
change, not the pseudo-change that only lasts until the next time my old
buttons get punched.
Our fear comes as we face the prospect of replacing the
familiar with the unknown. At the
crossroads of this moment, most of us hesitate and even retreat.
To deal with change more effectively here are several tips:
- Develop a faith for daily living. The realization that you are only a child of God and not God himself is liberating.
- Be
open to learning. The moment we stop trying to learn is when we become trapped in
the past.
- Practice
recognizing what is important in the present. Do not let what you can not do affect
what you can do.
- Separate what is important from what is imperative. You may not be able to change the wind, but you can adjust the sails.
- Shift
your thinking. Move from a focus on
problems to a focus on solutions.
Move from thinking for the moment to thinking with the end in
mind.
