Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean giving up familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, and relationships that have lost their meaning. John C. Maxwell
In stable times, habitual patterns work for you. They become your preferred patterns of reacting. You take the same route to work every day. You don’t have to map it out in your mind every morning. Its almost as if every turn were programmed into your car’s steering. Taking that route is an involuntary choice.
When a thoroughfare makes it easier and more convenient to take another route, you still find yourself habitually going the old way until you consciously establish a new pattern. For a while, you have to map out the new route mentally and force yourself to take it instead of the old route.
Change stops the process of involuntary actions and breaks the pattern.
The Walkman, introduced in 1979, by Sony fundamentally revolutionized the way the world listened to music. Twenty years later we witnessed another wave in the music industry with the launch of the Ipod by Apple.
Change is what forces evolution and takes us forward to explore new realm of experiences and add more meaning to our lives.
Change demands that you respond appropriately.
For many, this can cause stress, which is caused by the body’s instinct to defend itself. The mind perceives change as a challenge and it gears up to meet it. If the challenge doesn’t materialize, the body’s engine continues to race, causing stress.
The best remedy for stress is to avoid the event that causes it.
But the cycle of change is never ending. And to try to avoid it is to avoid life itself. Your best course is to change the way you react to it. Try to see change as a positive challenge, not a threat.
So instead of waiting for change to come knocking on your door, go and seek it out for yourself. Create situations and use opportunities to discover what’s happening out there: how relationships, businesses, or life situations are constantly evolving.
You will then find it easy to relate and identify areas of your life, which need to change.
Secondly identify activities or relationships or behaviors, which seem to be getting you nowhere or the same results.
Find out the commonalities and patterns and then consciously choose to break them by exploring new way avenues and expressions.
Third, spend some alone time everyday just to be with yourself. Once you get away from the cutter of everyday stuff, you will the necessary distance to view things from a new perspective and introspect the way ahead.
Sometimes breaking an old pattern is the only way to emerge free to live an inspired and conscious life.
Finally a quote by Wayne Dyer to put things in perspective, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”