We encounter challenges to keep our life experience fresh.
Please discuss. How does this play out in life?
I’ll start us out. 2020 has certainly been a year of new and unexpected trials, both on a societal and personal level. Events have pushed us to do things differently, view situations from alternate perspectives, re-evaluate what we really need versus what we want, learn to be alone more and become comfortable in solitude, be grateful for what we have. Most of us have had the nature of our day-to-day routines altered in significant ways.
Looking back to the beginning of the year, we can recognized major shifts in ourselves on various levels—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. While the process may have been uncomfortable at times, unless we became ill with COVID-19, there have been some positive longer-term effects. We’ve become more resilient, self-sufficient, flexible, ingenious, appreciative. Our world has changed and we have adapted to meet the new reality.
Our growth is laudable. We should be proud of what we’ve learned and how we’ve transformed. We reconfigured ourselves in response to trying circumstances. That said, our personal expansion was reactionary, born of necessity. As such, we resisted at times and may have sometimes fought to return to prior ways of being. Out path may have been painful and we weren’t always willing to change. Had larger events not impelled us, we likely would have comfortable kept ourselves and our lives just as they were.
Today’s message reminds me that my role as a human is to find and share joy in new and different life experiences. I will want to accept life changes with good grace and discover ways to appreciate them. Upping my adaptability quotient will help me have more fun in shifting circumstances.
Voluntary pursuit of change—learning new skills, engaging in introspection, exploring personal and physical challenges, trying out new foods, music, hobbies, and ways of thinking—will help me build a capacity to function and be happy outside of my typical comfort zone. The more I am willing to change, the easier it becomes.
How about you? What has 2020 shown you about your relationship to change?