“The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”
– Charles Du Bos
“Very few things in life are either good or bad, right or wrong. Most things just are.”
– Tom Graf, PhD
I like change. As anal retentive and routine-based as I can be, I have learned to really like and embrace change. Not just change for the sake of change, mind you, but change that moves us forward — toward maximizing what we can / will become. Human nature is to resist change, and until I was about 30 or so, I was, shall we say, exceptionally human in this regard — we’ll leave it at that for now!
Somehow, I needed to learn (and get comfortable) that when we’re “pushing the envelope,” change can bring about a variety of different responses within each of us. Some of the responses are conscious, and some are sub-conscious. Which brings us to the second quote above, which is one of my favorites. Tom Graf is a friend from Wichita, KS, and once he helped me understand that most of my wins and losses had nothing to do with my circumstances, but a lot to do with my expectations, he empowered me to strive for consistently more productive outcomes. He made me look at change through a different, more productive filter.
As humans, we rush to label things. “Hey, that’s great!” we say. Or, “Oh, rats! That’s just awful!” The fact is, neither statement is true in most cases. Most things just “are.”
Every day presents an opportunity to spend time and energy on what we want to become. Let’s fine tune our expectations. It will require some sacrifices and some alterations to the way we think — to the way we respond to what happens in our day-to-day — but when we do, I get the feeling that we’re going to really like what we become.
I get the feeling it will make a difference — for each of us, and for those around us.
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