Talking About Change vs. Making Change

Knowing that you need to make a change in your life is only the first step.  Understanding and taking the needed steps is the beginning of a journey that will bring about the endless powerful process of personal growth, self-understanding, self-reflection, and self-acceptance.  The process of change begins when you take action and no longer speak about what you want to do, what you are ready to do, what you know you need to do, but actually begin doing it.

It is so easy to tell yourself and others that you are ready to make the necessary changes in your life.  It is even harder when you work the steps and processes to personal healing.  For so long, so many of us have neglected ourselves because we were not ready to feel the pain of understanding who we were, why we did what we did and how and what we have gone through in our personal lives could have made a difference if we took those steps to understand them better. 

This does not apply to some and not all.  It applies to most of us because at some point in our lives we have all come across a situation that we had to make a decision and the result of it might not have been what we were expecting or looking forward to.  Personal relationships with family and friends, as well as school and business relationships.

While we might have worked through it, accepted it for what it was, there were times when we just were not happy with how we felt about it.  For so many of us, regardless of what that event was, there was feelings associated with it.  Anger, confusion, sadness, guilt, etc.  We either let it go, shrugged it off, or built up resentment that we kept dormant until it was ready to explode in anger and frustration.  The question I personally have had to work through is, “what did you do to work through those feelings?”  For so many of the outcomes I encountered…I did nothing. 

I thought that by holding onto my feelings, not addressing my feelings, “moving on,” or burying those feelings, it would allow me to do just that - move on, escape, never have to deal with them.  I actually thought I was powerful enough over my feelings that I could bury them so deep inside that there was absolutely no effect on me.  But that is not how it works. 

When we refuse to deal with our feelings, we don’t allow ourselves the ability to heal, to reflect on what really happened, what part we were in control of, what part we were not in control of, and what decisions we personally made that possibly had some direct or indirect impact on that specific event. 

When we understand that events from our pasts, the way we handled those events, how we might have or not might have addressed those events directly influences the way we dealt and deal with events in our current lives and actually work through those feelings, we will have promoted personal growth by beginning to practice the necessary changes needed in our lives.

Working through feelings, feeling the feelings is probably the hardest thing to do, especially when those feelings do not feel so good to us.  What we have to learn is that in order to learn to make necessary changes in our lives that will help us to make better decisions, or handle things, people, and events differently, it goes back to how we deal with our feelings and whether or not we are willing to feel those feelings.

I am not talking about just random thoughts, I am talking about getting deep down and personal with those feelings.  I am talking about getting raw.  I am talking about crying it out, laughing it out and then with time, having the ability to clearly process what and how we are feeling so we can make the necessary changes to become the person we want to become by our own accounts and not those of others.

The process of change begins when you take action and no longer speak about what you want to do, what you are ready to do, what you know you need to do, but actually begin doing it.