(Distinctions are subtleties of language that, when gotten, cause a shift in a belief, behavior, value or attitude.)


Change. It is continuous, unrelenting, natural, necessary, and beyond the control of any individual, with two basic ways for dealing with it.

One is to react and see change as a falling apart. Coming unglued. Unwound. Disintegrating. Crashing. What was so is no longer. Old roadmaps are unuseful.

When things fall apart it is uncomfortable. Unfamiliar. Scary even. We tend to tense up, pull in, hunker down, protect, and defend. This reaction to change is rooted in attachment to what was (attachments are the source of suffering and a separate topic). “But I need it to be the way it was,” we lament. “Without it, who will I be?” When one’s identification comes from the outside all change is uncomfortable.

A different viewpoint about change is that it is a falling away of what no longer works or is needed. What if its time has passed? What if it is simply a cycle which has completed readying the space for a new, clean cycle to begin? What if, in fresh light we can see essence which had been obscured in layers of the no-longer-useful?

When things fall away there is new energy, creativity, possibility, opportunity, potential. There is room for expansion, growth, fresh outcomes. It becomes easier to see the essence of what you really are and act from that greater perspective.


Coaching Point: Change is a given. One experience of it reacts and restricts; another experience responds and expands. Which do you want?


Copyright 2020 Steve Straus. All rights reserved.