Shake It Up Baby!

It is spring, the time of renewal and who
isn’t in the mood for a little shake up? Shake things up, make some changes!
Sound good! Feels good too, doesn’t it?

Certainly,
change can make us feel more energized and refreshed. It gives us a clean slate and new
beginning. It may tap into some hidden
passion and feel exciting and scary in a thrilling way. You can feel creative, alive and ready to
take on the world. All of these are wonderful
life affirming feelings.

What we want to be aware of is, that
constant need for change. I used to
pride myself on the fact I love change, embrace change. The upside is I do, in fact, roll fairly easy
with the “punches” in life but I have to acknowledge that this love
of change had its dark side.

It can often
be a good excuse to leave things uncompleted as we move onto the next
“best” thing. If you tend to
thrive on adrenalin, constant change feeds it.
It is a great way to hide from anything that is tough to handle. We may believe we are feeding our self-esteem
by patting ourselves on the back for all we do when in fact it is exhausting as
we throw more and more balls in the air.
One might even convince oneself that the juggling is the
achievement. Pretty creative thinking
wouldn’t you say?

When
do we reach the tipping point where it really becomes thriving on chaos? After all, you aren’t really missing the
target if the target keeps moving!

While almost all of us have something we
would like to change about ourselves, the challenge is to get out of our
comfort zone. For some of us, that is
keeping the status quo, wishing something external would happen to create the
change while for others avoidance hides nicely in the chaos. Isn’t that just another comfort zone?

How should we make those changes? Should it be in leaps and bounds or small
steps? I think both go hand in hand. I see it like a high jumper in training. She starts with slow deliberate steps, speeds
up and jumps! The next jump requires
pretty much the same exercise but now she has a better idea of the effort it
takes and it gets easier to start with the small steps and then take that
jump! It takes one measured step after
another, planning and a vision of the outcome.
Oh yeah, it takes repeated practice, perseverance, desire and focus too!

Several
years ago, a psychologist told me, that people who have a routine tend to live
longer. Thinking that sounded rather boring to my free wheeling and free
thinking ways, my retort was “are you sure it doesn’t just seem
longer?” In my quest to make
changes in my own life, I learned that
there is comfort and calm in upholding some routine but there is room for
freedom too. As I finish writing this
today, it is to be 20