Be Ready for the Wonderful 1/26 (audio 4:33)

About 9 years ago, I wrote 26 pages for a book titled “Be Ready for the Wonderful: Words of Well-Being to Ease Your Way Through Change.” Alas, the publisher I was working with chose not to proceed to completion, and the thread was dropped.

Since change and transition are now the order of the day for just about anyone and everyone, I feel inspired to share these 26 little nuggets in text and audio, one page at a time, perhaps even daily.

Today’s snippet includes the book’s Introduction and Page 1/Be Open to Change. Future audio posts containing one “page” will be considerably shorter.

Introduction

Life can easily be described as a series of transitions — steps taken forward, backward, and sideways. The big question is not whether you will experience upheavals and transitions — because you most certainly will — but, rather, how you will move through these unsettling periods in your life.

It’s always up to you. You can choose to glide through with excitement and anticipation and welcome new situations, or you can kick and scream like a frightened child as you imagine every rug yanked out from under you.

Change is inevitable. If your intention is to avoid change, resist change, or refuse to consider the blessings that change so often brings, you will not find what you are looking for in this book. Here you will discover new ways to embrace the inescapable shakeups destined to come your way. You will find a deep well of calming support as you seek equilibrium while everything around you spins out of your control. Ultimately, you will realize that change is nothing to fear and, in fact, offers an abundance of unexpected and delightful rewards.

Turn to these words of well-being before, during, and after your most challenging transitions. Think of them as compassionate guides on your journey of personal development. Let them inspire you to delve more deeply into your habitual reactions to change and seek mastery over more open, heartfelt, and balanced responses. When you leave behind the worry and stress commonly associated with changing times and choose to view change as a welcome ally along life’s odyssey, then you will be ready for the wonderful.

Be Open to Change

When change approaches, is your instinct to run and hide under the bed? Does change feel threatening, frightful, and downright hostile? Imagine shifting your beliefs about change. What if you thought of change as neither bad nor good? What if you embraced the idea that change is merely a fact of life, resting somewhere between the opposite poles of blessing and curse?

Change insists you adjust to new circumstances — but perhaps the adjustment was long overdue. Change presses you to consider alternatives you never considered before — but maybe you needed that nudge to expand your horizons and move beyond limited perceptions of your own capabilities.

Depending on whether you resist or welcome these natural cycles of evolution, change can blast you out of tired and worn routines or gently prod you into promising new possibilities. Could you at least meet change halfway? When you open yourself to all that change offers, you recognize that change can be a persuasive yet generous partner in your quest for an awakened life…