Flowing with Change
Approx 4 years ago, I was embarking on a very significant life change due to external circumstances that were not of my choosing, and someone told me to read the book “Who moved my Cheese”, by Dr. Spencer Johnson. I was not in any way shape or form into personal growth books at that time, in fact I had never read one. Even “The Secret” that a friend gave me one day was left on a table and eventually returned to her. So the thought of sitting down to read something like this was to me time consuming and not focused on my list of things to do. But she assured me it was very small and a very easy read. So I ordered in online and indeed laughed when it arrived as she was not lying at the size of it. And so I read it quite quickly, twice!
What it did for me at the time, was to set my mind at rest. To reassure me that what I was going through in my little though very significant world was ok. It was natural, normal and in the end would be ok! And that is what I needed to hear.
The book is about 4 mice who love their “cheese” and know where it is exactly every day (in the “maze”). Until one day, which seems quite sudden, (there have been little flags of changes prior to this day but they were not paying attention), the cheese was not there. They had taken for granted their cheese would always be there in the same place.
The “cheese” is a metaphor for what we want in life – good job, relationship, finance, health etc and the maze is where we would look for it – in our work, family, community etc. But no source of cheese lasts forever – Life changes whether we like it or not. And the story is about how each of the mice deal with the change. They can foresee it, adjust to it, learn to embrace it and enjoy it or they can work against it, argue its unfairness, blame others and sit in denial that it is happening.
Bringing this into the current world situation, the changes that have occurred have been sudden to a lot of us, even though if we were paying some attention we may have seen it coming. And because we are wired subconsciously to get into a comfort zone with wherever we are, whatever we have, our daily expectations of our own groundhog day, it is inevitable that when something happens to suddenly push us out of our zone and into the unknown, the reactions are going to be in the negative – fear, scarcity, panic, worry etc. This is embedded into us from our primal days of surviving against the tigers. But change as we do know is inevitable, and even though may seem unwanted and negative at the time of occurring, if we embrace it and flow with it, new opportunities will emerge. Once we settle into being in the moment and dealing with the situation at hand, new chances will reveal themselves to us.
So what can we do? Simply, we have a choice. A choice to embrace and flow, not fight and argue. A choice to do some reviewing and evaluating. A choice to ask “What if Positive” instead of “What if Negative”. A choice to trust that the universe is always conspiring in our favour and that changes, although seemingly not great at the time, are actually for our greater good. A choice to embrace the fear and ask the question “What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?”. A choice to take time and be present fully so that our creative brain is given a chance to do its job. A choice to believe that this could be the greatest thing to ever happen and loving the fact that things will never be the same again and that’s ok.
“Life is no straight and easy corridor along which we travel free and unhampered, but a maze of passages, through which we must seek our way, lost and confused, now and again checked in a blind alley. But always, if we have faith, a door will open for us, not perhaps one that we ourselves would ever have thought of, but one that will ultimately prove good for us.”— A. J. Cronin,Who Moved My Cheese?
Written by Fiona Brennan, Success Coach & Project Manager, 8th April 2020
If you would like help and support with change in your business, I am a Success coach working with ambitious entrepreneurs to achieve the business and life they desire. Please contact me via my website https://inspireactionsuccess.com or facebook page https://www.facebook.com/inspireactionsuccess. I would love to hear from you.
