The MONTHLY Motivator - April 2005

Embracing Change

Here is something of which you can be certain. The world will be a different place tomorrow than it is today. From moment to moment, hour to hour, month to month, year to year, things change. Sometimes the changes are dramatic and you can’t help but see them. Other changes are more subtle, yet just as potentially influential.

Change itself is really neither good nor bad. It is simply a fact of life. The situations that are brought about by change can certainly be good, bad, or, more often, a combination of both. Yet change itself is neutral. As such, it can become either a powerful positive tool or a cruel oppressor, depending entirely on how you respond to it and make use of it.

There is something in every person that welcomes change, and also something that fears change. You welcome change because you know it can make life better. You fear change because you know it can be challenging and risky. You are correct on both counts. Nothing happens without change. Things cannot get better without change. Change is absolutely essential to the living, breathing, dynamic existence called life. In a biological sense, change is fundamental to the very definition of life. And in change there is risk. Change brings the element of the unknown. Change upsets the status quo and can erode your sense of security.

Change is opportunity. Encased in that opportunity is the opportunity to succeed as well as the opportunity to fail. And change is inevitable. It will happen if you let it happen. It will also happen if you resist it. The strategy for successful living, then, is to acknowledge and embrace change, to find the positive possibilities in changes, and to manifest those possibilities.

Opportunity does not exist without change. Though most people say they would welcome opportunity, far fewer people are open to real and substantive change. Yet to take advantage of opportunity you must be open to change. There is no other way. Real, meaningful opportunity is not a free ride. It is a challenge. A big part of the challenge is change. Opportunities are all too often portrayed as something for nothing. In reality, there is no such thing. Opportunity involves effort, and a big part of that effort comes about through change -- changing your attitude, changing your perspective, changing your thinking, changing your actions.

You must manage and respond to change so that it will work for you, rather than against you. That is how you take advantage of opportunities. When you put yourself on the side of change, when you work with it rather than against it, you get the powerful momentum of change moving in your favor. It is futile to fight against compelling changes, and far more productive to find a way to make them work for you.

Though change is an essential part of life, it is not everything. As with most other things of value and power, change works best when it is well balanced. In order to truly benefit from change, there must be a part of you that remains steady. As strange as it might seem at first, to effectively embrace change it helps immeasurably to be firmly rooted. Change almost always involves letting go. That takes courage, faith and confidence. In order to let go of the superficial things, you must have something substantial to which you can hold on firmly.

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--Ralph Marston

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