Can you imagine being packed and ready to catch a flight the next morning to Hawaii when your daughter calls and needs to be taken to the hospital after getting into an accident?
Instead of spending the next week in Hawaii, we spent the week at home with her recovering. Once I realized she would be okay, I felt the disappointment of the sudden change of plans, followed by a feeling of acceptance of “what is.” Not an easy place to always get to. It has not always been a simple journey to hold this stance. This was one of many experiences that taught me about life.
I have learned that two things are certain: change is going to happen, and nothing lasts forever. The more you resist these two statements the more painful life will be. I am sure you have heard the saying “what you resist, persists.” I so want to resist this truth, but it is reality.
Our fear of change makes us resist rather than leaning into the change.
When hitting ice when you are driving, you need to slide into it rather than resist it. The same is true in life. You see, there are not many things that are guaranteed in life, but we are guaranteed change as everything has a beginning and an end.
And everything evolves. It is like stopping a rose growing and opening the way it does. Our life is the same way. Like every rose, it is unique and has its own journey in this world, just as we do. Let it evolve, take care of it, feed it, love it and it will blossom to its full potential. The only way we can live to this full potential is by accepting and embracing change and the beginning and end of things in our life.
I am looking at moving homes. I love where I live and have had an amazing experience in this home, but life being life is sending me some changes. I am spending too much time obsessing over the what-ifs, and have I made a mistake? Why do we go to this place? Because we let fear of the unknown or change control our decisions. But this means keeping life limited.
So often we fall short of our potential because of fear, because of resistance, because of limited thinking, because we get stuck in not allowing ourselves and others to evolve. The reality of physics is that nothing is static or fixed. Nothing is neutral, you are either moving towards or away from things including your true self.
It is through our ability to see ourselves in the fluidity of life that it is a forever changing process, that we are then able to be our true and creative selves, multi-dimensional, and are able to reach our full potential.
Resistance takes a lot of energy, emotionally, physically and spiritually, energy that we can use to reach that full potential. When we live with fluidity, it opens our hearts and our minds, our being which allows us to be more than often we even thought possible.
We so think that things being constant and not changing make us safe. That is an illusion. It is said that when things stop changing we are done. I’m not ready to be done yet. So you have a choice: resist change or lean into it.
I do believe that when we accept change there is always something wonderful ahead. And when we live fully embracing change we get to enjoy the journey of life.
Perhaps Hunter S. Thompson said it best: “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’”
Embrace change.
Contact Dr. Shelly Zavala at DrZavala@mac.com or DrZavala.com.
