CHANGE BEGINS WITHIN

I am a great believer in fresh starts. A new year, a new month, a new week; sometimes even a new day, can call for a resolution or plan to get going on some project or plan which we have delayed until now.

In the hope of reviving and remotivating ourselves, most of us try and changes things around from time to time. To feel a real sense of progress however, it is probably more important, to act on making the changes we are willing and ready to make within ourselves.

I wonder why so many of us, treat ourselves with so little respect? Whether it’s our health we are neglecting or some dream that we are always putting away; many of us take better care of the needs of strangers and our pets, than we do ourselves. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of us actually take better care of almost anyone else than we do of ourselves.

In fact, I suspect that many of us have probably done more in our lives to learn how to get along better with others, than we have in learning how to get along with ourselves.

It is probably part of the human condition that, each of us wants to belong somewhere, to feel we are part of the life around us. Unfortunately, sometimes we accept someone else's, perhaps even a stranger’s opinion as more important than our own?

I believe that sooner or later, each of us needs to decide how much we are going to continue letting those around us effect our lives going forward. Having decided this we take steps to bring more of what we need and want into our lives.

I suspect most of us secretly hope that, someday soon, some magic will bring us the life and the things we feel we need to make us happy. The problem is, that in the present, most of us, still aren’t living the lives we would really like to be living. Worse still, we secretly wonder if we ever will. It would probably do us more good, when we are daydreaming to dream up which small steps we might take to decrease the gap between who we actually are and who we would have liked to have been.

I also think that each of us, at some point in our lives, needs to think about what kind of person we feel we are. I am convinced that most of us would like to feel, and probably would like to believe, that we are good people.

Then again, how good can we be when most of us can’t admit the truth about our weak points and shortcomings to ourselves? How does being a good person jive with living a life which still has episodes of bitterness, envy, anger, temper tantrums and road rage? I’d love to know. While, none of us is perfect, some things could use our attention and we know it.

Like me, you may have deliberately left Type A people behind you a long time ago. Most of us wonder how anyone could be happy if they knew that everyone around them finds them tiring, and tiresome, to be around. Who could be impressed by someone who seems inexplicably to need to ride over other people as they bulldoze their way through life? What’s eating them and how insecure can such a person possibly be?

Meanwhile, however, why don’t more of us ask the demanding and obnoxious, the self-centered and rude to be responsible and explain themselves? Why instead do we meekly step out of their way and thereby permit their rude, crude and ignorant behaviour to continue?

If we’re such good people, why do we still sometimes envy others? Why do we demand so much attention? Why do many of us appear to be so angry about everything and at everyone around us? What are we trying to prove? And probably more importantly, who are we trying to prove it to?

The big question for each of us to ask ourselves, in whatever area of our lives which needs improvement might be, ‘What is it going to take for you to stop running on all cylinders 24/7?’ We might also ask ourselves, ‘Why are you and I still doing this to ourselves?’ While these and other questions will put each of us on the spot, being honest means recognizing that none of us is exempt from the need to do better in one area of our lives or another.

Most of us understand and accept that our lives are, and will always be, a work in progress. This may not be a bad thing.

Luckily, most of the time, we usually are only accountable to ourselves. In fact, none of us must change anything, unless we actually want to have a better life and become the person we always wanted to be, when we grew up.