Embrace change

Many of us are frightened of change. We feel that it has negative connotations. When we see that the opposite is true, we can free ourselves.

If there is one thing that separates children from adults it is that children love change and adults tend to fear it—or are at least apprehensive of it. Children are always excited by new things, and are always willing to experiment with stuff. This can be anything from inventing a new game out of nothing to going to new places. Their lives are in a state of constant change and they experience wonder because of it.

But as we get older, we begin to lose this love of change and try to keep away from change as much as possible. We try to keep things the same in all areas of our lives. This can be fine in some areas, such as wanting to keep hold of a wonderful house that we live in, or to make sure that our bank balance stays at a healthy level – or even better rises through the years.  But in many cases, this apprehensiveness about change is not a good thing.  It can hold us back from many things – such as making change in areas of our life that really need it. We turn down a new job because we're not sure if we will like it’s not.  We shy away from making new friends because we’re not sure how the relationship will turn out.  The worst thing is when we stop looking for new things altogether.  In short, we give up our dreams, or fail to make new ones that can motivate us to change ourselves.

The trouble with this approach to life is that it is built on a faulty understanding of change.  The first thing we have to remember is that change is natural – totally natural.  By the same token, it is totally unnatural for things not to change. A world without change would be a really strange world. Imagine the seasons never changing or night never becoming day and vice versa.

The second thing we have to remember is that we can’t stop change at all. We sometimes think we can, but this is a delusion. No matter what we do, things change.  We get older. Friends get older.  Our friends move away and relationships we felt were steady have a habit of disintegrating as we find our friends living hundreds of miles away and the old certainties of meeting the same people every Friday night for drinks and social gatherings are washed away.

So what does this tell us about change? It tells us that we can’t stop it, so we might as well embrace it. For instance, instead of trying to fight the fact that we’re getting older, we should embrace change and see getting older as an integral part of the journey of life. Each stage of our life has its own special characteristics, and without change we wouldn’t be able to experience these. When it comes to our jobs, we know that the skills we have today may be out of date by tomorrow. In this case, it is pointless to try to hold on to skills which may soon be useless. Again, instead of fighting change, we can embrace it, and see the need to learn new skills as a way to work on our own self development.

The fact that we know in our hearts that many of our relationships will not last forever is a good way to inspire us constantly to make new friends and new relationships. Whatever we do, change is going to happen so we may as well accept it and make the most of it. When we do this, we put ourselves in control. We think change is out of our control, but when we embrace it we become part of it and can use change positively instead of seeing it as a negative influence in our lives. Fighting against change is like trying to sail a ship into the wind –an impossibility. But embracing change is like allowing the wind to push the ship forward. It’s like riding on the crest of a wave.

So, the next time you find yourself worried about the changes you see all around you, try to think of the alternative. Instead of being frightened of change, see it as a positive part of life. In fact, a life completely without change would be one of the worst things imaginable. A life without change would mean becoming afflicted with one of the worst things in the world – abject boredom. And that’s something that anyone would want to avoid—or change if it was already there.