Power In Personal Change

None of us signed up for this trip. While we did, in a variety of ways, sign up for our excursions, they are not necessarily the ones we ordered; instead, we most likely have traveled different routes and to different destinations than were in our original itineraries. There are significant factors that we had not counted on as well as results that have ranged from electrifying to surprising to pleasing to edifying and maybe even to terrifying.

We did not set out to conquer Space Mountain nor to experience all the versions of Star Wars; rather, we thought we’d just hang with The Simpsons, be terrified by The Walking Dead, or sit back and laugh at The Big Bang Theory. Oh, we knew we had to splice serious things among our chosen elements of entertainment but we were operating under the assumption that we were sitting at the master controls. We’ve all heard that to assume makes an ass out of you and me (ass – u – me) and the other jibe which goes something like “just when you think you know everything that’s going on, something happens to prove that you don’t know diddly”.

That something can be a world event, a large shift or loss in your personal life, or the passage through some of life’s ages and stages that redefine your existence – which means that from today forward your life will not continue to be the same. The actual force of change can be good or not or parts of both at once.

Some occurrences are unexpected while others can be felt as forthcoming. They can be something that just puzzles us or has the impact of a hard-driving fist slamming into the middle of our stomachs, preventing us from drawing in oxygen for what seems like eternity. If truth be told, I believe that there is no one upward of age 30 who cannot readily paint a picture of these examples.

The first rule of handling positive change should be to savor it: to make its goodness last as long as possible. The primary dictate of receiving notice of negative change is to sit down and breathe. Just do this for a while. Just breathe. Don’t think. You’ll do plenty of thinking later.

Positive change will take off and gallop down the road of your life. Negative change just sits there and coldly stares at you. The positive strokes, the negative bites. If there’s confusion with the positive it rises and becomes a gentle cloud on which you float until things are more settled. Confusion in the negative snags you in a nest of thorns. The champion of the positive is action. The trap of the negative is denial.

Denial should be recognized for what it is and grabbed and beaten to a bloody pulp. There’s nothing more insidious than denial, nothing more sinister, nothing more damaging. Denial will rob you of every defense. It will force you to live the same pain over and over again. It will prevent you from healing. It will swallow you in misery.

With the positive, unfold it – spread it out – share the joy far and wide. Proclaim the essence of it to everyone you know and let it shine from within you on everyone you see. When a wave of the positive is about to end or has ended reach out for another journey in happiness and keep grabbing them as they go by.

With the negative – fight! Never lie down! Arise with your fists upraised and stride toward the enemy with your battle cry on your lips. Gulp down your panic and make courage your steed, despite your fear. Allow no fear to paralyze you! When the voices – within and without – say “you can’t do it”, don’t listen. Drown them out with that battle cry! The first step is the most difficult, but take that fearful step, and then another, and another. USE YOUR PERSONAL POWER!!!

One of the “P’s” in personal power is patience. Our culture has never exhibited patience as a virtue. Patience should be part of our positives and our negatives.

Over and over we hear the good advice in the same word – focus. We understand that to focus is a quality we should attain and maintain. I believe this is very sound advice as we hear more, learn more, do more when we are focused. To focus, I think, is to commit, to comprehend, to produce, to excel, to care. When you focus, you do so in patience. Focusing means you have to more fully examine something, often that you must slow down to do so; therefore – patience.

So, wait!

In positive change, wait so that you may savor and share it. In the negative, wait so that you can cope, take the right action, and heal.

We have a responsibility to ourselves, to our loved ones, our families, our friends. That responsibility: to stay centered, secure, and as happy as possible in all circumstances. Often, gaining and regaining these attributes may take patience and, at times, we may have to just wait to see what happens.

Change is good in many ways. Change from the bad often turns into change for the good. How many times have we used that wonderful golden hindsight and remembered how awful a particular situation had been for us while we were living it and then had to comment, in the now, that things would have been so much worse, in the long run, without what we viewed initially as negative change.

In good times, and especially in those troubled ones, we should take every opportunity to gird ourselves with new strengths. All elements of time create change. We may very well not be doing in the next moment what we are doing in this one; and, we own this moment but not the next one.

Each day we have the opportunity to have a new life, to weave changes into a better fabric of our days and ways for ourselves, our families, our friends, our nation.

With all of these things in mind, what have you found that has been the most powerful change in your life?

Power In Personal Change

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