The secret of change

How often have you tried to change yourself?
If you are anything like me your answer is probably SOOOO many times… How did that go for you? Where you successful? Able to create sustainable change? Again, if you are anything like me the answer is probably “mwah, not so much”. So why is it so hard to change ourselves?

Change can be difficult. Yet we also know that human beings have an amazing ability to adapt to changes. Both coming from within and inflicted from outside. The reason that change can be difficult is that there are feelings that come with change that we don’t necessarily like: anger at having to implement a change, fear of the new, conflicted feelings about the direction to take, frustration about uncertainty and what will come next, responsibility to get it right for ourselves and others around us.

In my own learning, THE reason that I became so frustrated to change myself is that I tried time and again to fight my old patterns. Which was a tedious task. The moment I learned to stop looking at the past, let it go so to speak and instead concentrate on the future, the outlook was much brighter. I was reminded of this last week when I read Socrates’ quote: “the secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new”…