My pastor friend has a fascinating exercise in his sermon about openness to change.
He asks the members of the congregation to remember a time in their lives when they said they would never do something, and then to spend the next three minutes telling someone the story about when they did it.
It gets a lovely response every time. People laugh and marvel and shake their heads in disbelief.
It’s a holy reminder that as we grow older, we all hang our hearts on such narrow pegs. Openness gets conditioned out of us like silt from gravel. And we get stuck in these limited ways of looking at and experiencing the world.
But if we take a moment to look each other in the eye and remind each other just how just how wrong we used to be, just how human we really are, we realize that we are all engaged in this endless process of transformation and evolution over time.
We all are capable of changing more than we are willing to admit. But our perfectionism makes us forget that. Our ego tries to convince us that the tornado of change is not coming to us swiftly and seemingly without mercy.
Ha, good one. We should try that joke at open mic night.
What is something you said you would never do? And how did it feel when you eventually did it?
It’s amazing how we underestimate our willingness, ability and motivation to change.
And so, let us not be married to who we are. Let us be open to changing our course.
And let us cooperate with each page of our history as it unfolds.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What pleasure are you getting out of not changing?
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Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.
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