Provocation of the month:
”Everything changes whether we want it to or not”
Balance in life
It has been very common during the last decades to talk about balance in life for leaders and co-workers. The idea has been that we can achieve a place or state where everything is in balance. This is not the case. Change is natural and will continue every day and every second. There is nothing we can do about that.
What we can do something about is our own Vision and our own Values and take our own inititatives for change. We must though realize that many other people and nature itself are adding changes to our lives every day.
So what is it then we are striving for? How should we handle our constantly changing world? Let´s first look at some typical changes that we are all confronted with.
Getting older
We are getting older, and so are our parents and our children or the next generation. This is probably the most important change in our lives and there is nothing we can do about it. We can just accept it and try to avoid imbalances when we are confronted with the change of ”growing older”.
Changes in our relationships
We are also confronted with changes in our relationships. These changes can be everything from parents or other relatives who die, friends that no longer are friends or friends that divorce. As our children grow our relationship with them changes. Change is natural and at the same time they may not always lead to balance in life, but rather the opposite and we are challenged.
Constructive ways of coping with changes
Striving for balance in life may not be as important as striving for constructive ways of coping with changes. In psycho-synthesis they practice the creative use of pain, crisis and conflict. They do not want to escape pain, crisis or conflict in order to get back to a balanced way. They see them as a way to become more creative.
Change is natural on all levels. Individual as well as team, corporate and country/region level. We can see this every day when we meet with family, friends or colleagues at work. We read and listen to reports on these changes in the newspaper, on television and on the Internet.
What about you?
How do you cope with change in your everyday private and professional life? How much energy do you get from or consume in everyday changes? What do you learn from changes in life? How much easier or more difficult does it become for you to cope with the changes? How many initiatives for change do you, yourself, take in your private or professional life? What is your experience?
We can also reflect upon how the financial experts think and act when they these days talk about regaining financial stability. Will it ever be there? Or is change the normal state? A professor from Stanford University recently said: ”The financial system is so complex so one has to ask what is stability”.
Recommendation of the month
The recommendation of the month is not a book or web-site this time. I want you to inspire yourself to reflect upon the following questions. You are very welcome to share your reflections at the bottom of the page.
1) How and when have I taken initiatives for change in my private and professional life and what are my experiences from that?
2) How have I coped with changes that other people or nature has caused and what have I learned from that?
3) What happens within me when I think of new changes in my private and professional life that I know will come (even if I do not know exactly what or how)?
All the best
Hans
(photo Ernst Vikne)
My reflections
Write your reflections here
