Don't Change - Self-Evolve!

How many times in your life have you been told you should ‘change’ something or another about you? Maybe it was the way you act or the way you work that you were told to change. Or maybe it was even the way you think that you should ‘change.’  Do you remember your reaction to this outside encroachment on your personal being? Did it make you change or did it make you merely alter the next action and your reaction to it? In the end, did anything really ‘change’ about you? I would bet it didn’t. But if you had approached the situation as an opportunity to review and alter your process of reacting, you would have opened the door to “self-evolution.”

Henry Ford once said, “One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again.” We should all see our failures, no matter how small or how large, as the challenges of life from which we can turn into great opportunities. The key to doing this lies in our ability to recognize every challenge, every failure, indeed every interaction in life as an opportunity for us to evolve our way of thinking, our way of acting and our way of being.  It is a natural human tendency to question everything. We do it every minute of every day with everything we see, hear, smell, touch and think. The answers we derive from these questions then direct how we react. We question the actions that come from our reactions and the cycle starts again.

Like you, I have encountered great challenges on the journey of my life. I question what is happening and then react. When my questioning has been focused on everything except the reasons why I let the challenge affect me directly, I ended up reacting in such a way that the challenge reappeared, often with dire consequences. In those instances, I had failed to question fully and failed to learn from the challenge. However, when I questioned much more deeply and focused on why the challenge affected me directly, I ended up questioning my initial actions and reactions. It was in this act of questioning my own way of questioning that I realized what I needed to know.  I stopped becoming a passive and reactive questioner and started becoming an active and proactive questioner of myself. 

None of us likes ‘change’ because it means that we may have to do something or become someone we inherently are not comfortable with. That’s a very natural reaction.  In fact, Morris Massey in his What You Are Is Where You Were When series very correctly shows that by age 21, our values are ‘locked-in’ and become very difficult to change. He goes on to say that only through a ‘significant emotional event’ can we alter our way of thinking and acting. Yet, I believe we can do this every minute of every day. I believe we can ‘self-evolve’ by making every challenge, every failure, every question presented to us as an opportunity to be a better, more content and happy person leading a fulfilling life. That’s what my blog, dedicated to my thoughts surrounding "Mastering the Art of Self-Evolution", is founded upon. This is my opportunity to share my experiences, actions, reactions and questions, both good and bad, to those challenges of life which have caused me to ‘self-evolve’ and ultimately seek out those opportunities which can lead to ultimate personal satisfaction and happiness.

I invite you to join me on this journey and share your own experiences. Let’s question each other and ourselves. In the end, I believe our own personal self-evolutions will collectively help lift the whole of society to a better future.