If you don’t mind me being a bit sassy today, I’m here to make a pretty blunt announcement: change is inevitable. While most of us hate this idea, we all get it. I’m not saying anything new. The problem is, most of us run for the hills when we see change a comin’. Change is not the problem; running for the hills is the problem. When we try to deny change, avoid it, dismiss it, or turn away from it, that’s when we run into trouble. Now don’t try to deny this because I can see through all of you like cellophane– most of us want things to stay the same or run by our own script, with our own agenda. Humans feel like the directors of our own private movie and when the picture ain’t running smoothly we get all kinds of crazy.

Here’s a list of the crazy we can get: emotional problems, addictions, health problems, feelings of stagnancy and fatigue, stiffness, boredom, fear, hostility and even, well, we can get delusional. What I mean by delusional is that people can start developing a desperate fantasy life in avoidance of how things are. A fantasy life can include anything from daydreaming to stalking. If things aren’t running by your script, how crazy are you willing to get to avoid the change? The answer to this question will give you a fundamental answer to how well your whole life system is running.

Things are what they are right now where you are. They have changed to get you there, so own it. If you’re meant to be grieving the loss of a loved one, then grieve. Don’t say no to that process. That’s the process of change that your body-mind needs. If you’ve been sitting around on your rump waiting for your next job to knock on the front door, or your dream lover to show up, then stand up, do a little jig, and shake it off.  You can’t fool me– you’re scared– scared of change. Maybe you’re even crippled by it. It’s not that “the man is keeping you down,” or that “there are no jobs out there”  (well ok, maybe if you live in a town of 20, I’ll forgive you, but even then, someone out there needs a service, we all need each other and there’s a space for you, so stop your whining). Can’t find the love of your life…Ok, so I’m being a bit simplistic and we’ll need to break this down.

Let’s use love as an example…

You say: “I’m stuck. I can’t find love.”

I say: “Yes. Yes, you can”

You say: “Easy for you to say. You’re a gorgeous super model living in the big city full of nice folks. I’m too fat, I’m too ugly, there’s no good people out here in my world.”

I say: This is delusional thinking. It’s delusional because we’ve all seen a fat ugly, even fat ugly and ruthless person with love in their life. When you saw this person with love you probably said to yourself “huh? so why am I all alone?” I’ll tell you. You don’t like change. Period. No, I’m serious. This is it people, this is the keystone. It’s all about how we handle change. Now, I don’t believe anyone is too fat, or too ugly or fundamentally flawed (I’m just pollyanna that way) to find love. I believe that people are fundamentally awesome, and well some of them, are just seriously misguided (fear).  I believe that people make themselves fat and believe themselves into ugliness because? Yup, you guessed it: fear. The dialogue above points to the person’s fear of rejection (“I’m just too this or that” to be loved). Deciphering that means: I’m afraid that I’m unlovable for being those things; I’m afraid I’m no good and other people know it. But really, what you’re afraid of beyond the rejection and self-doubt is that YOU’LL HAVE TO CHANGE to let go of this fear. It’s a fear of newness. The newness in this case is finding a new sense of self and self-worth and letting go of a pattern of thinking that the world is out to get you and embracing the new.

JUST FOR TODAY, EMBRACE THE NEWNESS!

I’m very excited about this idea of embracing newness. I’ve been enjoying a correspondence with a friend who introduced me to the Grinberg Technique. I have no idea what it is, but I was told that it can help with all sorts of health and life issues and that’s the kind of stuff I’m into. I looked it up and found this phenomenal lecture by Avi Greenberg. I’m going to quote a huge chunk of it here because I know you people never go to my links (which are very good links, if I do say so myself). But please do go over to the Grinberg website and read the whole article:

FOR REAL, READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE…

By Avi Greenberg:

“In order to really know how you’re doing, I’d ask you how much “new” is in your life. I wouldn’t ask you about good or bad things, but about new ones. For the young people among you, “new” is not such a big deal, because except for symptoms that keep returning, everything is new—the world is still new. For most people above 30, the world starts to look old. Every town is just another town. You’ve seen snow many times, so it’s just snow again. To bring something new, to a life that is usually a repetition of the old, is magical.

One of the questions you have to ask your clients is how much “new” they have in their life. The more “new” there is in one’s life, the less old there is. Remember that a big part of the work we’re doing with people is with their past—to make sure that it is completed and that “new” can enter into their life. This way you teach them to renew themselves.

Let’s look at a box and say that this box is the usual me—my name, my habits, all my unfinished history, what people say about me, what I believe or not about myself, everything. I live inside this box and I see the world from there. If something inside the box tells me that I always have to be important otherwise I’m not alive, then I’ll do everything as if it were very important. As I’m doing it already so mechanically, I don’t even realize that this is what I’m doing—because this is “me.” And I believe that everybody else is doing the same, because if I am like this, then everybody else is also like this. That’s the way I see them. If I’m trying to be important and you’re trying to be important, I’ll have to fight you so I will be the important one. And it doesn’t matter with whom I’m doing it. Even if the other person tells me that it’s okay, that he doesn’t mind that I’ll be more important, I don’t believe him. Because I know that to be important is the most important thing. My relationships can then be of two kinds—either I’m dominating people so I’ll feel important, or I’m fighting them constantly in order to become important. And it won’t be just with being important. It will be the same with any other stance that the person is stuck with, like being more beautiful, thinner, more intelligent or righteous, etc. If I took the stance that I have to be tough, the world will be a tough place for me. What will happen if I encounter real softness? It will be impossible for me to bear it, I’ll be scared. And if a person with a stance of softness encounters a tough person he’ll also be afraid. It doesn’t matter what my stance is, as soon as something appears in my life that has a different or new stance, fear will come.

Imagine that you meet someone that doesn’t play according to the rules you keep. For example, in a chess game you’re playing with someone that moves his horse in a way that is not allowed for the horse in chess. You tell him this, and he says that according to his rules it’s okay. With that person you won’t be able to communicate in the way you are used to. In chess, you can say that it’s impossible to play with him, and it’s not so important since it’s only chess. But in life, it means that you can’t play with people who don’t play according to your rules. So you’ll meet and “play” only with a limited variety of people. We’re normally trying to meet only people that behave like us. When we meet a person that is strange to us, we try to avoid him because he scares us—we don’t know how to hold onto our old habits in such a relationship. Look at your life and you’ll see that most of the time you behaved in the same way. You had the same relationships again and again with people who were seemingly different people.”

– READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.grinbergmethod.com/avi_lecture.asp#sthash.fOhvVD0v.dpuf

JUST FOR TODAY, EMBRACE THE NEWNESS!