I have been doing some changing of my business and while I have been doing that – I have been thinking about the challenges of change. If you are like me, change is a lovely challenge. I embrace it with excitement, interest and intrigue. The difficulty for me is that my mind goes so quickly to that terrific place in my where there are so many great possibilities and ideas that I can get stalled there. Deciding on a definitive change and then following through would be more of my challenge. I usually have to make a mind map and then I have found that I really need to limit myself to 3 goals for the week in order to get out of the dreaming stage and into the doing stage.
I know from our relationship together in the counselling room that change is not at all like that for all of you. For some of you, change is threatening and something to be resisted. All kinds of fears come up. What if I can’t do what I have proposed for myself or my partner? I have tried to change before and did not follow through, disappointing myself and others. Or perhaps the comfort of your current dysfunction, painful as it is, is better then the unknown of change. Or you are stuck in not wanting to change unless your partner changes. And so the time rolls by, the suffering continues and the isolation in the relationship continues with the ideal of a healthy marriage becoming a distant dream.
If this is where you are at, I invite you to consider that change is actually for your benefit personally. Your relationship is the gift that you get to bump up against yourself and your need to change, where your interactions together surfaces some grit in your oyster. Whether your partner changes or does not, is irrelevant to our own need for change. Consider embracing the changes you are being invited to, turn that grit into a very fine pearl. As usual, go forth and be wonderful and love like you actually mean it!
Lynda Chalmers
