Major Positivity Comes From Recognizing When You Need to Change
But as always, it’s a choice of approach and direction for you to make.
The other day, I came to a stark realization. I needed to actively change.
This was a matter of looking at all the ways my life has changed since the pandemic – and frankly, all the ways that it hasn’t changed.
As I looked at the elements that are my life as it currently is, I saw with stark clarity how I haven’t chosen to change.
Because this is the level of change where I am wholly in control. This is a shift in how I approach certain things in my life, and whether I actively work on this or passively float along – and then start wondering why I feel like I’m stuck.
The answer is simple, but the questions to reach it are not.
Bluntly – I’ve formed a comfort zone, a place of stability, where and how I like my life to sit. Or rather, where and how I liked my life sitting a couple of years ago.
I knew it shifted, and I appreciate the changes that have occurred. What I failed to notice, however, are the ways that I haven’t changed in the process.
Let me explain what I’m writing about here.
Passive recognition and acceptance
I know for certain that COVID-19 changed the world. At least, it changed a whole lot of elements of my personal perception of the world.
The fantastic gig I had at the start of the pandemic ended because the pandemic ended the company. But I took advantage of the lockdown, and working from home. I wrote, edited, had edited, and published 3 novels in 2020 and 6 novels in 2021. During my 2020/2021 writing experience, I shifted from writing as a pantser to writing as a planner. That helped me produce more work with more focus at a faster pace.
Despite not publishing more work in 2022, I have multiple finished books awaiting edits and covers. MY creative process has changed.
While I actively recognized and worked with the above changes, others occurred in my life that were passive. The lockdown, social distancing, masking, and not having gatherings of groups altered friendships. The pandemic kept us apart physically, but that led to mental and emotional distance as well.
For a whole year, no fencing practice. When we returned, we had to be masked and maintain distance for months. This took a psychological toll that has yet to be fully reconciled.
But on a personal level, I had become so comfortable in my friendships and how they worked – that I missed that they changed. They changed without me.
This is neither good nor bad. It’s just the truth. And it’s taken me quite a long time to recognize and acknowledge it and what it is.
Recognizing when you need to change
Pre-pandemic, I had friends who were like family to me. Many were people I trusted a lot, several were close confidants that I could share anything and everything with.
Through no fault, no mistakes, and no determinable thing – those friendships changed. That’s because we all changed – and those changes made us different enough that the once-close friendships shifted.
This weekend, there was a 50th birthday party for a once close friend of this nature. I was invited, but it didn’t feel right for me to attend – so I didn’t. That friendship, however, changed about a decade or so ago.
The more recent shift, however, only just dawned on me. Like, days ago, only just dawned on me.
Knowing I had a weekend with my wife away, and no event to go to, I pondered – who should I hang out with?
And it occurred to me that apart from my wife, those close friends and confidants are no more.
Change happens. It’s the only constant in the universe. I am in no way blaming anyone or anything for this. And to anyone reading this who I consider a friend – you know I mean no disrespect, but you aren’t a close confidant of that nature.
But the major realization I’ve had is this – I have not let go of that comfort zone. What does that mean? It means I need to change. The illusion of the old friends who are like family, and the close confidants, needs to give way to the true reality that is my life.
This is not a negative
I know that this might read as negative. But it’s not. I’m not lamenting a loss, blaming anyone or anything, or seeking sympathy. I’m sharing that I’m recognizing that while the reality of my life has changed – I need to change with it.
Ergo, if I would like new friends who are like family and new close confidants – other than my wife – I need to change and make that happen.
Here I am, a 50-year-old adult, recognizing and acknowledging that I could use some new friends.
I don’t need new friends to replace my current friends. This is more specific – I need new friends who are confidants, who will kick my ass and then listen to me whine about it after. But then, with equal empathy, they’ll cheer me on and offer support.
Could I make confidants out of existing friends? Maybe. But this also comes with another element of where and how I need to change.
Specifically – I need more connections who are creatives striving as I am to make a living from creating. Not to put too fine a point on it – but I need to make some new friends, and confidants, who are also writers/storytellers like me.
This is majorly positive
My therapist has been helping me to shift the way I see certain things in my life. What’s more, she helps me find greater clarity when it comes to my desire to live more authentically.
This ties into the reading and studying I’ve done to be more actively consciously aware – i.e., mindful – and take the driver’s seat for my life experiences.
When I came to this realization, that the comfort zone of my friendships has changed – I felt elated. This didn’t create longing, sadness, or any negative emotion. I didn’t feel bad when I realized the nature of the friendships I have aren’t like older, but no longer close friendships. Instead, I felt free.
It was a relief to recognize and acknowledge this. The world changed, and the people I walk it with changed, too. The confusion caused by this false comfort zone has lifted. And that’s tremendous, empowering positivity for me.
I suppose I could have chosen to see this as negative. But I can’t. This recognition takes previously unrecognized and unacknowledged pressure off my psyche – and I’m excited to step forward and embrace and work with my need to change.
This choice tends to be the same for everyone when faced with it. The direction and approach you take – positive or negative – belongs wholly to you, every time.
All that remains now is for me to act upon this understanding.
Recognizing when you need to change isn’t hard
It’s all about working with mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, and intentions to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that things around you have changed – and you haven’t – whatever the reason, you open the way for yourself to make choices and decisions for how to proceed. Knowing that positivity or negativity is a direction and approach you can choose, it’s up to you to employ active conscious awareness – mindfulness – and work with your need to change. Or not.
This empowers you – and in turn, your empowerment can empower others around you.
Taking an approach to positivity and negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts matters in a way to open more dialogue. In that form, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
Lastly, the better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can also open those around you to their empowerment.
To me, that’s a worthwhile endeavor to explore and share.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the four hundred-and-eighty-ninth entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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