How To Accept That Change is Inevitable

When I talk on stage I ask the audience the rather obvious question ‘Would you rather be experiencing life or death?

The crowd can sense it’s some kind of trick question, but they all vote for life.

Then I say ‘Then you have to accept this.’ And I put up the Oxford English

Dictionary definition of what life is.

Life: the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

The key bit to notice is CONTINUAL CHANGE.

THE ONLY people who are NOT continually changing are those that are did. And they’re going through some changes we don’t even want to talk about.

Total acceptance of continual change is the PRICE OF ADMISSION for being alive.

So if we want to be one of those people who everyone says ‘Oh they just LOVE LIFE’ – and who doesn’t – we HAVE TO train ourselves to love change. We have to keep stepping out of our comfort zone.

Change isn’t just PART of life. It is the very essence, the very nature of being alive. The Buddhists call it impermanence and accept it as the nature of existence. It’s only us in the west who call it ‘Oh here we go again…’

The point is, change is implacable and unstoppable, so there’s no point getting sucked in to whingeing about the unfairness of it all. When I was young I was always whingeing about the unfairness of change.

I was finally all set up, now everything’s changed again, it’s not fair.

Life never works out exactly as I plan IT’S NOT FAIR!

Of course it’s not fair. Life isn’t fair. The world isn’t fair. If the universe was a fair place the only time they’d EVER let Miley Cyrus ANYWHERE NEAR a microphone would be to say: Price check, checkout three, lamb mince one kilo. Price check, checkout three.

Life IS change.

The flip side of that is, when you refuse to change you don’t keep the past you just lose the future. But that’s a topic for another day…

If you’ve got something out of today’s video, please press the like Facebook Like button. And please leave a comment and tell me what you’ve been fighting that you now see as inevitable.

Feel free to check out my video series on taking the fear out of change at martinwilson.com and I’ll see you soon.