Talk about an oxymoron! To have new, to expand into our true selves change is the essential first step. Now, here’s the kicker, sometimes change hurts.
There we are rolling along feeling great that new experiences are coming into our lives when suddenly we feel the pangs of letting go of what we knew. Ouch. So what do we do? Do we deny the pain, move forward as though nothing were affecting us? If we do that we are certainly going to experience, sooner or later, some type of breakdown.
If you leave your job of many years and step into retirement, or a new position, if the old position held any joy for us we will have to mourn the old job, admit there is some feeling of loss. We don’t have to go dumping this on everyone we know, certainly, but in the quiet of our minds, maybe to a few close friends, we want to release our emotions.
In my book It’s All About Me I offer some tools for doing just this. Those tools include how to identify why we are mourning, what it is we are mourning, and how to put those understandings into a place where we can work with them without denial.
New without change simply brings along the old stuff into our new reality, diminishing the good parts of the past, and diluting the new experience.
Benjamin Franklin said “nothing is certain except death and taxes.” He could have added change to those two items. Without change there is no growth, without growth we wither on the vine. Embrace the new, love the old, but keep moving forward!
Read for yourself how to identify what is speaking to you as you go forward in It’s All About Me, the Involved Observer. 