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Dear ,
When I changed my website about two years ago I choose the title “Allow change to happen”. Little did I know how many more changes life would have in store for me.
So in this newsletter I want to reflect on the following question:
Can we really change ourselves?
Is change something that is an active act of will? Or does it need more?
And if there is more to it, what is it that really makes a change?
Looking back to on the 60 years of my life and also on the 10 years that I am now working with the “Orders of Love” my conclusion is:
No, we cannot change ourselves, but it is life changing us, when we surrender to it.
Now you might ask: What does this mean and what is the difference?
Well, usually, when people say that they want a change in their life, they start with consciously (or sometimes unconsciously) rejecting what they have or what they are experiencing in that moment:
A relationship, or the way they live this relationship. A workplace that doesn’t fulfill them or a colleague that is giving them a hard time. Troubles with kids or family. Patterns of self-sabotage. Issues with anxiety, depression, eating disorders and much more.
The first reaction to the thought of change is to reject what is – be it someone or something or even (parts of) ourselves.
I think we all know that this does not really bring a solution, but could rather lead to even more conflicts and doubts, frustration and often helplessness, and in the end desperation, when we realize that again we haven’t managed to progress.
Very often I hear the words “I have worked so hard on myself these last months/years, and still I am stuck or it feels that there hasn’t been any progress!”
My answer usually is “STOP WORKING SO HARD!”.
Please don’t get me wrong. Of course we need to give our best when we want to achieve something on an everyday level. If we have to do an exam we need to study. If we want to become a singer or an athlete we need to train our voice or our body. If we want to become CEO of a company we need to acquire the necessary skills.
But the change I am talking about is something different.
If you remember, my question at the beginning was: “Can we change ourselves?” So this change has to do with who we are - on a soul or heart level. It has to do with how we sense ourselves and how we feel and think about ourselves. Also many changes that we want to make regarding unhappy relationships or workplaces in the end have to do with how we experience ourselves.
And these changes can’t be achieved in the way most of us are taught from childhood on like: “If you only try hard enough, you will succeed”.
These changes come when we surrender to life as it is in that moment.
When we acknowledge our feelings, the situation we are in, the wound that another unhappy relationship has opened within us, the frustration and helplessness that we feel regarding the bullying colleague, the sadness that comes up when we think of our mother or father, the desperation when for the nth time we fall back in unhealthy eating patterns, the despair regarding the numbness of our depression, the anger towards someone who treated us without respect ….
These are the situations that life is giving us – not to treat us bad or to punish us, but to support us in understanding our unhealed wounds, loyalties or entanglements.
By surrendering to them and to life, we learn to look at them (and us) with compassion, to embrace them and to understand what really belongs to us and what not. And in this process of acknowledgement and letting go change happens as something natural.
So that in the end we might not become who we want to become, but who we truly are and are meant to be.
Just like the poppy in the picture above.
I am wishing you all a gentle and loving month of June
In the spirit of love and reconciliation
Ursula |
