Meaningful Progress

What’s remarkable when you look back across the years is you see with more clarity that true change takes time.

True, sustainable change takes longer than we’d like to think. From personal experience, it’s occurred across years. As someone who both fears yet desires change, it’s been a scary and enlightening process for me. I’ve learned the greatest lessons looking back over the last eight years, especially with the emphasis on inner work and therapy in the past three years. And as I continue on my path, I know my learning will only continue.

What I’ve learned at this point is: if it’s sustainable change we want, change that becomes embodied as who we are, it takes time. It takes self-compassion and balanced action. True change requires patience. These are not what I would consider strengths for many of us in the fast-paced, tech-dependent society we live in today. Patience was certainly not my strength in past years, and it’s something I’m continuously working on. If we uncover what’s underneath the adage of time and patience (something we’ve all heard before), we can understand true change at a deeper level. Let’s begin with how the very aspect of wanting change can keep us stuck.

There’s one reason why dreams stay dreams for many of us.

And it’s not because of fear.

I used to think it was fear. If you had asked me five years ago, that’s what I would have answered.

Three years ago, I started down on a dimly lit path that seemed very much less traveled, surrounded by many unknowns.

Step by step, I put one foot in front of another. Some days, it was easier. Other times, I inched forward haltingly. During the darkest portions of the path, I froze, wondering where I was going and if I was making the wrong decision.

I didn’t realize at the time my path was no different than before. That the winding path up ahead was meant to be for only one—myself—as it had been all along.

We’ve all heard of the importance of living in the present moment.

All we have is in this very moment. Life is simply the current moment we’re experiencing right now—not the anticipation of fabricated future scenarios or dramatized renditions of the past.

Yet for me, it’s not the only consideration.