Two Sides of Change

In the fullness of life, everyone knows there will be change, yet when faced with making a major decision, I realized I didn't know how to proceed. If you're like me, you suffer through it until the way becomes clear. How it comes clear can be difficult or smooth, depending on multiple factors, which I'm about to explore. Any way you look at it, there are two sides of change.

This side of change encourages us to find the heart of what we actually want from life as we struggle to make sense of what wants to change. It's like slogging through sticky mud or endless sand dunes hoping for dry land or an oasis.

My lack of courage to confront issues, even when I recognize the need for change, has made the waffling approach quite brutal in the past. At first, I didn't know what I wanted, only that I knew it was something I couldn't name, propelled only by a giant yearning. That consistent yearning drove me crazy when I thought about it. Eventually the yearning stopped, but not before going through many fundamental crises, the ones that made me question my sanity and my judgment. It's chronicled in my book.

The second side is also familiar because it makes me face something I don't want to face and challenges my priorities, courage, faith, and beliefs. I react to this one vehemently, roaring in disapproval at the offending change. Think of elections the day after the vote, when our choice is not the next leader of our country. We're filled with despair and brace ourselves for the changes to come.

Another of the second type of change involves financial changes. For me, these are the most challenging choices, as I refuse to make decisions based solely on financial factors. It's a universal challenge as financial change is likely to affect our and our significant others' lives.

Financial changes may also involve rearranging priorities, like the time I wanted to go to a workshop in North Carolina with David Neagle. Waffling and putting myself through contortions, I tried to come up with extra funds. I listened to his podcasts and knew his rags to riches story after a life-threatening disaster.

In September of 1989, what was supposed to be a rare relaxing day with family cruising down the Illinois River in a roomy boat, quickly turned into a nightmare...David Neagle was pulled deep into the gates of a dam that shredded his flesh, broke his back, and nearly drowned him. No one expected him to survive the accident, and rescue workers even told his family he was already dead. (Entire boats had been sucked into this same dam, without survivors.)

After his brush with death, David began to study his own potential. In the 12 months following his accident ~ despite being unable to walk for more than a month ~ he tripled his income! By December of 2000, David had expanded to become an executive corporate manager, a stock investor, and a business owner! (https://www.amazon.ca/stores/author/B00820WPGW/about)

Today, he runs a multi-million dollar business helping other entrepreneurs pivot like he did.

Since then, he has gained recognition for his work relating to spiritual laws and also for his sales mastery abilities. He could teach me how to be a better salesperson without the high-stakes pressure tactics I loathed. It came down to finances. How would I pay for it? A grand plan came to me one day. For six months, I quit buying alcohol to pay for my plane ticket and accommodation. It wasn't the right time. It boosted my confidence, but unfortunately, I needed more courage to move forward.

Faced with much change over my lifetime, I learned a few strategies on how to sort through tough decisions:

1. Get to know your body's clues. Ask yourself if this change is for my highest and best life? Search your heart and scan your body for any clues. Options that make my heart sink and my body feel heavy are my clues to say no.

2. Spend time with what your resistance to change is–It could be financial barriers, courage issues, niggling doubts about which way to go. Reach into your soul and ask it what is holding you back. Your soul will answer. Once you have an answer, do everything you can to clear up the issue.  

3. Ask yourself probing "what if" questions such as, What if I made this choice, what would happen? Your brain is wired to answer questions, so you'll know pretty quickly what you don't want to do.

4. One of the most potent questions I ask myself is What am I learning from my struggle with this choice? If I had asked myself this question when deciding to go to North Carolina, I might have saved myself the trip, not because of David's workshop. It was fantastic, and the food was incredible! The answer to this question would have been This isn't the right time.

5. Get more information and advice from someone you trust, but you don't want them to give you the answer. I ask Mavis, the tree, for her advice. She always gives me her tree wisdom, but if you don't have a tree to talk with, just the act of talking it out with another person will often lead you to a conclusion or an answer.

There are many more tips I could give. However, going through a hard process to make a decision is a gift in itself. Wrestling and slogging will make the path to the next tough decision a little easier. And it doesn't end! Right now I'm working on a decision that, either way I look at it, I do not know what the outcome will be. This decision will be based on gathering information, getting advice, asking myself questions, and most of all, faith that what I do will be in alignment with my soul-inspired purpose.