I had an interesting conversation with my dad on a recent car drive and the concept of the overly dreaded and guarded word, “CHANGE.”
You see we were talking about how passionate and excited I get when I talk about my upcoming book, “SYNERGY: The Power of Color, Language, & Physiology” and I explained to him it was easy to get excited about something that I see help so many people and all with very little ease on both their parts as well as my own. His response was, “Well, of course, because you don’t make change so scary or difficult for them after they learn your techniques.”
And that’s when I really shocked him when I said, “That is true but at the end of the day, people aren’t truly afraid of change, they are just selfish.”
After he stared at me for a few seconds with his perplexed and astonished look upon his face, I proceeded to clarify with an example for him.
“If I told you that you had just won 1 million dollars and I was going to give you 1 million dollars every year for the rest of your life, would you be excited?”
His perplexity quickly changed to a smiling smirk and chuckling, he responded, “Well, of course I would be excited, who wouldn’t be?”
“Well, that is quite a large change, isn’t it? I mean your entire lifestyle would change, wouldn’t it?” I asked him.
“Yes…so you are saying that would make me selfish?” He replied.
“No, of course not, but the fact is that in that example, you didn’t fear change, you were excited about it! Because you knew it had a POSITIVE impact or effect on you.” I continued on, “However, if I told you that you owed me 1 million dollars; I don’t think you would have the same excitement anymore. That change had a negative effect on you. Similar to surprises,” I said, “everyone loves good surprises but it is natural to not like the bad surprises in life. Therefore, if you knew a change was going to be positive you wouldn’t fear it, you would welcome it and embrace it. It is actually the unknown, potential NEGATIVE EFFECT that people fear. It is honestly the fear that it will have a negative effect on them despite that it may help the better of someone else or even their company as a whole. Thus they are not afraid of change, they are simply acting out a natural selfish instinct. It’s just that no one wants to admit they are being selfish, because we are all taught from early childhood on that to be selfish is a negative act. So, instead, we use the excuse that it is the change that we are afraid of.”
Maybe we should stop using that as an excuse. If we had to realize that by resisting change it really IS being selfish and selfishness does not serve anyone positively; we would be more open to change and all the positive opportunities it brings.
STOP being selfish and WELCOME change. Without change, you would not be who you are today and the new possibilities, opportunities, and results tomorrow would never exist. Remind yourself:
“You are either growing or dying; there is no such as stagnant.”
