THE PROCESS OF CHANGE
LESSON TWO | EXPEDITION OF THE HEART SERIES
When I got off the plane in Amsterdam, a lot seemed to suddenly change. My external world looked entirely different, yet I remember being so calm the day I left, and it was because the real change had already happened.
That flight was simply the last piece to fall into place. The move itself was the easiest part. I had undergone so much change internally that the only natural progression left was for that change to spill out and be reflected in my external reality.
When we look around us we are always met with a mirror; a reflection of our internal states, and often times it is the accumulation of so many micro-moments which lead us to that point. It’s never the big change that’s hard, it’s the micro-decisions leading up to it that count.
Real change doesn’t always happen overnight, it happens each and every time we choose differently. Each and every time we ask “Does this action I’m about to make get me closer to the person I want to become?”. Every action we take is either moving us towards or away from that version of ourselves. When you add up enough decisions that bring you closer, you wake up and your world suddenly looks different. Yet, I know this to be true for the opposite as well. Those times you look around with immense disappointment and say to yourself “How did I get here ?”. Small, seemingly insignificant little choices going in the wrong direction is how you got there. Whether the outcome is what we want or not, sometimes life just hits us like that. A wake-up call, like we smack up against life, and see once and for all what exactly we’ve been choosing all along.
When these moments happen; when we collide into a different life, I feel as though these are quantum leaps. We take small step after small step, after small step, and then boom, life swings us somewhere new. When we land in these places, although we did the internal work to get there, it still takes time to catch up with that life; to come back into sync with our surroundings.
I naively thought I’d get off that plane and start a new chapter, and yet it took me weeks to catch up to life again.
And so, change remains a tricky thing. It’s something we’re constantly in the process of creating. Even when we feel we’re at a standstill, life moves forward whether we like it or not. The more deliberate we are with our choices, the more focused we are on where we want to go …chances are you’ll encounter more of those good quantum leaps forward. Those moments when life magically puts some air beneath your wings. When you wake up and say to yourself “I can’t believe I got here”….and yet, inside you’ll know damn well how you got there. You chose it.
