What will you change today?

November 8, 2022

I recently collected a number of quotes on change and think that a few go well together for today’s post. Change is happening all the time and all around us. Just think of the changes that today will bring in our political environment. We spend much of our time reacting to change, but today’s quotes focus on being pro-active about change.

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” — Barack Obama

“You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone.” — Roy T. Bennett

“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.” — Abraham Maslow

“I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.” — Georg C. Lichtenberg

We must start as President Obama states by deciding that we are not going to sit around and wait for change to come to us. We are the change agent. Change starts with us.

Next, we must acknowledge that we may be resisting change because we are unwilling to leave our comfort zone, to take the chances that change involves as Bennett advised. We become to comfortable with the safety of staying put and do not even try to move forward.  We let our safe routine become our prisons, trapping us as if we were a mime in his imaginary glass box. Yet if we do not advance and grow, as Maslow puts it, life will leave us behind.

Finally, we need to understand that change is not always going to result in things being better, just different and if we make enough things different, we will eventually get to the better place that we desire.

So, the question becomes, “What will you change today?” What things can we change in our day-to-day life that will challenge our comfort zone and allow us to grow?

Maybe we can decide to greet strangers differently; not trying to remain safe by avoiding interacting with them, but, rather, greeting them with a warm “Hello, how are you?” and a smile. How did that make you feel? How did that change you?

Perhaps you can try a new place to have lunch, perhaps someplace with an ethnic food menu. You will experience new tastes and see new people that you don’t normally meet. Was that an interesting experience? Did you like the new flavors that you experienced? Did you meet some new people? How did that change you?

The point is to acknowledge and become more aware that what you think of as your daily routine is, by definition, your comfort zone. Staying in that comfort zone means staying as you are and not growing as a person, not being all that you could be.

You may be thinking, “I’m happy where I am, why should I disturb things by making changes?”  Maybe two more quotes from my collection will help answer that question.

 “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” — Henri Bergson

“He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.” — Harold Wilson

Quite simply we cannot stop change from occurring, nor should we try. Instead, resolve to the agent of change in your life rather than being a by-stander and always reacting to the changes that are inevitable.

But what should you change?

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” — Maya Angelou

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” — Wayne W. Dyer

Maybe what you need to change today is your attitude.

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Posted by Norm Werner

What will move you to take that chance?

November 2, 2022

As happens many times, a post to the Jack’s Winning Words blog this morning provides the inspiration for this post –

You must make a choice to take a chance or your life will never change.”  (Zig Ziglar)

Pastor Freed often uses quotes from Ziglar in his blog. This quote seemed to go nicely together with the headline from an article that I saved –

Which is Stronger – Outside Pressure to Change? Or your Internal Drive to Transform? (Headline on an article I saw recently)

Outside pressure to make changes in our lives is a very strong motivator, whether that change is something like how we act, some bad habit that we have, or maybe even how we look. Most people have a desire (some might even say a “need”) to be accepted by their peers. If we become conscious of disapproval from those around us, we are forced to at least look at what it is that they don’t like about what they see.

The recognition of that disapproval from those around us can provoke our “fight or flight” reaction mechanism – sometimes both at the same time. I suspect that the whole Goth movement in youth is both a rebellion against main-stream peer pressure to conform to peer group standards for body image and appearance style and a flight into the acceptance of an alternative lifestyle group.

What Ziglar was pointing out is that we all must make choices about things in our lives that represent inflection points – points at which change will redirect the course of our lives. Most of these decision points have both external and internal forces at play. If there is no external reason to change, no peer pressure or societal law or standard to consider, it is totally up to our internal desire for change. Career changes come immediately to mind, although some “careers” such as being a drug dealer have strong societal disapproval as external factors.

One’s internal drive to transform is usually strongly influenced by what we call our “good conscious”, our ability to distinguish between right and wrong and our desire to be on the “right side”. Most of those decisions aren’t given a lot of thought because we just “know” what the right thing to do is and do it automatically.

Some things, like quitting smoking, have both components in the decision process. Society took a dim view of smoking some time back and there was certainly enough proof of it bad effects on us to give pause to any smoker for self-reflection and the need for change. We continue to see external factors at work today in on-gong ads that now are also influencing decision on things like Vaping and alcohol and drug use.

A good time for self-reflection and to consider taking the chance to change is every morning while you are getting ready for the day ahead. If you start your day with morning prayers, maybe add this to those prayers. Take a moment to consider that you have yet to commit (or submit) to your normal routine today, which may contain some bad habits or pre-dispositions that you’d really like to change. Resolve to change something about yourself today that will make you a better person. Ask God for His help if you are praying (I usually just ask God to help me make petter decisions during the day). Then set out to make a conscious effort to effect those changes.

You may not (in most cases will not) be completely successful in changing your life in one day, but you can be successful in nudging it off the path that you were on and heading it in a slightly different direction – celebrate even that slight change and increase your resolve (your internal drive) for tomorrow.

Take the chance to change today. You are on the way to a new you. You will find more acceptance in society, and you will feel better about yourself. It’s a win-win.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Let your light shine in the darkness…

November 1, 2022

A couple of quotes in my collection just seemed to fit together this morning –

“Fear has a very concrete power of keeping us from doing and saying the things that are our purpose.” (Luvvie Ajayi)

“Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”  (Brené Brown)

Darkness and fear go hand in hand. We fear what we cannot see in the darkness – maybe an upcoming event or a place that we’ve neve been before. We let our imaginations replace the unknown with all sorts of improbable but none the less seemingly possible negative outcomes. We talk (think) ourselves out of even trying. Only through overcoming those fears and exploring the things that we kept ourselves from doing can we really discover our own power and purpose (our real destiny).

In Sunday School you might have learned a little song titled “This little light of mine”. That is a perfect song for children but as we grow up we accept things less and less and need to understand things more and more. Perhaps this Scottish hymn is more appropriate for adults.

Fear and self-doubt are both darkness’s that can creep over us and prevent us from doing and saying the things that we want to say and should say. They hold us back from our purposes in life. At the end of every dark tunnel of fear that we allow ourselves to enter is the same ultimate fear – the fear of death. It is only when we can conquer that fear that we can let our light shine. The only path to conquering that fear is the one that Jesus provided for us on the cross – through belief in Him, through faith. Bob Dylan said it in the lyrics for the song  Precious Angel: “Ya either got faith or ya got unbelief and there ain’t no neutral ground.”

So, fear not, believe in Christ and be brave, and let the light of your faith shine in whatever darkness you face. The light of your faith will show you the way out of the darkness and it may help illuminate the path for others facing the same darkness. Let your light shine in the darkness.

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Posted by Norm Werner

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