Change does not feel like breaking bread. Nope.
It does not feel like chopping wood either.
It is not like swimming.
Or running. Or even climbing.
Nope none of these. However hard some of them are.
Change is so much harder.
It feels like learning to walk on water.
Learning to fly without wings.
It feels like being scared to go out in the dark and having to go out regardless.
It’s like having to walk into a haunted house and there is nobody walking in with you.
Should I go on?
I think you get the feeling.
Even though the word change is not a synonym of darkness or haunting, or even flying without wings, it might as well be.
At least if someone had told us what change really is, we would not have put it under the self help category.
It would have been the 8th wonder of the world.
Rare. Miraculous. Almost inhuman.
Like the Great Pyramid at Giza and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Because if we knew how hard change is we would prepare accordingly.
We would train for it.
We would find a way to invent wings.
Expecting it to be scary and impossible would have prepared us for the trip.
So since it is never too late. Here it is.
Change is the hardest thing you will ever have to experience. It is like being reborn without getting a new body. @SecondFirsts (Click to Tweet!)
Having to use the same brain doing something new with the old commands.
It is like asking ourselves to speak a new language without anyone teaching it to us.
So enough with the world talking about change as if we are breaking bread.
We are not.
We are going into the battlefield.
The jungle.
The darkness.
But here is what I am proposing to take with us.
Night vision glasses or in other words, wisdom from before the loss.
Also some people who have been there before.
They know the stakes, and the ghosts that live in the haunted house.
Photo reminders of ourselves as kids.
Diving in the ocean water without holding our breath.
And above all, well, above all, the skill of falling down and getting back up again.
You also did that as a kid.
When you got your new body and learned to walk.
You never considered giving up then.
Life is made of moments of change stemming from very difficult losses.
You are born to learn how to change.
And fine, sure, you can also break bread.
But not before you grab those night vision glasses.
My dear friend, I have been writing to you for seven years and my responsibility has always been to tell you the truth.
I am not a self help author, I am a battlefield warrior with many bodies all in one.
And I am here to walk inside all the haunted houses in your life….with you.
With night vision and breaking bread,
Christina
Christina Rasmussen is the creator and founder of The Life Reentry Institute, Second Firsts, The Life Starters and Star Letters. Christina is on a crusade to help millions of people rebuild, reclaim, and relaunch their lives using the power of their own minds. Christina’s work has been featured on ABC News, NPR, The White House Blog, and MariaShriver.com. She is the bestselling author of Second Firsts: Live, Laugh, and Love Again, which has also been translated in Chinese and German and is currently working on her second book on expanding the mind in ways that allows co-creation with the forces of the universe. She is also writing her first work of fiction: a science fiction story about a woman on a quest to start over and begin a new life. You can find more information on her website and follow her on FB or Twitter.
Image courtesy of Flo Maderebner.
