An interesting approach to change................

This months online Kripula Yoga newsletter had a great article about change. They were referencing changing your diet to promote health, but I believe the ideas can easily be used regarding anything we strive to change. Below (in red) is a small part of the article. I wanted to share it, because I saw so much of myself in it, and I thought you might do likewise. If you want to check out the entire article you can locate it through Kripula's Web site. The title of the article is, Nutritional Changes: Making a Beginning, and was written by: Laura Didyk

"And I, like so many people, was prone to either trying to change it all at once or doing nothing at all.

Making a big change is much more exhilarating than doing nothing, but one must approach with caution. As with new relationships, I’ve always loved the very early stages of my personal health revolutions--the possibility in the air, the sense that I am on the edge of something monumental and life-changing. Things are going to be different this time. But my life has been marked by enthusiastic attempts at creating a healthier version of myself, followed by an unmistakable sense of failure.

I have had long stretches of eating badly: in diners across the country, in college meal halls, and, years later, in my own dining room. I have gained weight and lost weight; been an athlete and, nearly overnight, not been one. I have changed everything--given up sugar, caffeine, and nicotine--then decided I was being too rigid and gleefully started in again on all three, at once. I’ve spent months at a time doing daily yoga, then fizzled out and instead spent the time in front of the television. (I have to say here that I fortunately never smoked, but am guilty of the other two.)

What I didn’t know for a long time was that my expectations for change, for immediate and overnight health, were completely unrealistic and unsustainable. I wasn’t failing; I was setting myself up for the impossible. People are slow to change. Real, deep, permanent change happens over time. When the attempts at change are intentional, made with awareness and self-compassion, and approached by taking baby steps, it really can be lasting. We can also trust that when we change one thing, other areas in our lives will follow suit."

How true is that? For so many years I was so hopelessly black and white, all or nothing that real change took forever, or just never seemed to show up. In the past couple of years, as I have learned to be nicer to myself, I have also discovered that LESS truly is more, and change can happen slowly over a longer period of time. I have also discovered that as the author of the article states, by changing one small thing, other changes just seem to fall into place.

So, use this article to start today. Pick that one small thing that you want to be different and keep the notion of changing it in the frontal lobe (the thinking area) of your brain. In a few short weeks you just might be looking around and note that things are changed for the better.