Be Open to Change

Nothing changes, if nothing changes

Courtney. C Stevens

Change.  A simple word loaded with emotion. For some of us, the thought of change is terrifying. We fear a shift from the ‘known’ to the ‘unknown’. We cling to the familiar, doing all we can to resist change, to keep things the same aka ‘normal’, comfortable.

For others, change is welcomed with open arms. It’s an opportunity to grow, evolve, transform. People who are open to change tend to see life’s challenges and setbacks as a chance to take a different path, to explore the unknown. Change for them is both exciting and life affirming.

How we approach change often depends on whether we initiated it or if it was thrust, unwanted upon us. If you lose your job, a friend, a loved one, chances are this unwanted change will result in negative emotions, maybe even anger. You didn’t ask for this, right? Life can be so unfair. Why did this happen to you? Why couldn’t things stay the same? Because change is a certainty we can’t escape.

One of my favorite sayings has always been, ‘The world is what you think it is. If you change your thoughts, you change the world.” I love this so much that I wrote it on a post-it note where it remains perched above my desk, no matter how many times my office has changed over the years. For me, the words are comforting. They allow me to believe I alone have the power to change how I see my world and therefore I alone change my entire world.

By now, you’ve likely guessed that I fall under the ‘people who embrace change’ category. According to my Mom, I come by it naturally. As a young girl, one of the few things I had control over in my child’s world was my bedroom. Every few months, I’d stand back and survey all the furniture and belongings in my pink room and decide it was time to change.  Armed with all the might in my 10-year-old body, I’d start shoving, dragging and pulling everything from one end of the room to the other until, ‘viola’. I had a transformed room. I had the power to change my small world and I took it. My Mom started calling me ‘Gypsy’, convinced I had a roamer’s heart.

How right she was.

In the years and decades that followed my bedroom makeovers, I have changed homes more than a dozen times. Every time I left a place I lived in, I closed the door and literally never looked back. I was more interested in where I was going than where I had been.

 I chose a career in television that allowed me to change positions at the end of every contract, to meet new people and explore new places every time I took a new job.

Being open to change has made my life exciting. But it’s also made it difficult. I haven’t always thought every step I’ve taken through thoroughly enough; weighed the pros and cons and examined the effect some of my decisions had on those around me.  I just jumped right in. And sometimes it was the wrong decision. Like the time I accepted a job transfer from Vancouver to Toronto, the biggest market in television journalism, without thinking clearly about how this huge change would impact my young daughter.

Maybe a little fear of change might have come in handy – might have slowed me down enough to realize that moving a young child across the county and away from the rest of her family was not the kind of change she needed. I talk about this life altering decision and what I did to make it right, to change it, in an online article I wrote years ago. I will share the article with you in another post on motherhood.

Change is good. Responsible change is even better. The changes I put in place in my life after I returned to Vancouver stayed with me for two decades. And then I decided I was ready for another change. But that’s a different story to share another time.

For now, I’d like to challenge you to think about change in your own life. What would you change if you could? If time, money, commitments, expectations were not a factor?  What is your heart telling you that you should change? Just start the discussion with yourself and see where it leads you. And remember these wise words, “Any plan is bad that cannot be changed.”

A presto

Anna