Change Is Good: 3 Reasons You Should Accept Change In People
Believe it or not, change is not bad. Everything in life undergoes changes, from the seasons to our presidents. So, why is it hard for us to accept change when it comes to people's lives?
Maybe, it's because of fear. We fear change because we fear the unknown. We know what we like, so if anything different comes along, even if it's better, we are ready to reject it.
Too often, we do this with our friends. We condemn the foreign behaviors we manage to suspect.
This approach stems from defense, as we hate seeing what we know become something else. But, the truth is that we aren't the people we were years ago and as we age, we shouldn't continue to be the same people either.
Change is good — here's why:
Because you should never stop learning
Life has more lessons to teach than we have time to learn. No matter where you are in life, as a father, son, student or employee, there is always room for improvement.
For some, it's easy to sense when the time has come to strive toward the next level. For others, it takes drastic measures to see that where they are is not where they want to be permanently.
It takes a certain amount of self-awareness and humility to get to the next stage of our progressions as individuals. Accepting that we don’t know it all is half of the battle.
And of course, we must be willing to learn, become students and build from what we already know. It’s a process that inevitably leads to shedding old habits and sometimes, becoming a different person.
Because sometimes, you have to focus on you
For some reason, phrases like, "I never changed" and "I’ve always been the same,” are popular in today’s society. It's as if never evolving as an individual is an honorable trait to have.
Often, we distinguish the choices our friends make as betrayal, as we fail to discern whether the changes they make are what's best for them. If we're not careful, our judgment may prevent the very friends we love from evolving.
We can't hold people accountable for the decisions we think are best for them; that's not our job. Our job is to support them. We also can't let our friends guilt us into being the same people we always have been for their sakes.
The truth is that sometimes, you must do what’s best for you. If that comes at the expense of a “friend,” it just means he or she was not your friend in the first place.
As our lives progress, it is our duty to progress with them. What worked for us at age 16 won’t work for us at age 21 and certainly will not work at age 25.
A testament of a true friendship is not only the ability to accept someone for who he or she is, but for the person he or she is destined to become.
Because of your dreams
To go somewhere you've never gone, you must do something you've never done. There comes a time in life when nothing will be more important than reaching your potential. And, for some, such a time causes significant changes in our approaches to life.
Professional athletics is a business in which they measure talented athletes against talented athletes. What separates good from great, however, is the work one is willing to put in: the lifestyle, diet, off-season workouts and conditioning.
The same goes for the average kid turned honor-roll student or person studying for the bar exam. The choice to turn a job into a lifestyle is a decision that translates directly to the workplace, whether your office is the gridiron, canvas or a desk.
The same concept goes for us as we begin to branch off into the depths of who we are. Personal goals and benchmarks we set for ourselves become more important as we age.
We want these things more than ever before and the excuse for not moving out of mom's, finishing that degree or killing that habit, becomes less intense as time ticks by.
We should welcome enlightenment rather than shun it. We should revel at revelation instead of glorifying complacency; we should praise change instead of despise it.
Love the growth our friends experience and just maybe, they will do the same in return.
