When change is hard-nosed and ornery

When change is mentioned, the hair on most people’s backs starts to stand up, especially when it comes to personal change. Sure, change a hairstyle, change a clothing style, even change a job – but change a person (and I mean true lasting change), does it really happen?

Well, I for one am here to say, yes! It does. I know this because change has broken upon my life in so many crashing waves that I will never again be the same.

But, that said, I have also struggled with what I will call “hard-nosed, ornery change.” This might be an area that we try to change but for some reason or another, change keeps evading us.

This “hard-nosed, ornery change” is a very real and very painful topic for many people. It has a tendency to keep rubbing our failure in our faces. It also makes us believe a lie that we never can, and never will be able to fully eliminate it and walk into the change we desire.

But that is a hard-nosed and ornery LIE.

I recently stumbled upon a thought on this subject which helped me immensely. Hopefully it will help you view your situation differently as well.

Most times we view change as… well… change. Rigorous, boring, and incredibly painful. In our heads it looks kind of like reupholstering a chair. The fabric is totally ripped off along with the stuffing and many times the insides as well. The finished result ends up looking nothing like the chair we started with.

We may have started with yellow stripes but we end up with gray leopard print.

When we view change this way it means we have to turn into something completely different from we are at the moment. It means tearing off the skin, the stuffing, the springs, yes, especially the springs, and slapping a new face on!

But, what if change is actually more like fog lifting over a scene that is already there, we just haven’t seen it yet?

What if change is more about becoming the person we were always meant to be, more of an unveiling rather than a reupholstering?

When I look at my “hard-nosed and ornery” change through this lens it doesn’t look so “hard-nosed” any more. I can stop fighting against something and simply start digging up a treasure that needs to be unearthed.

The “ornery” part also dissipates because it is no longer a tugging, and pulling, and ripping at something but simply a journey of becoming. Of lifting layers and unearthing treasures.

If who I want to become is there already there and I just need to go about finding it, this is a much different and much more appealing approach than fighting the dragon of seemingly unchangeable change.

Could you muster the courage to become the person you wanted to be if you were told it was already buried somewhere deep in you and you just had to work at revealing it? I think so!

We choose the path we walk. We also choose how we look at the path we are walking on. Choose to become the person no one else but you can become!

Photo Credit: Bitter Jeweler via Compfight cc