It is always a pleasure to read the words of others and for those words to become inspiration for yet another new expression.  And that is exactly what the preceding post by Sergio Blancafort, entitled “Our Old Skin,” has achieved for me.

Sergio reminds us of the importance of not being trapped in the past, living as a slave to our memories, forever bound to nostalgia.

We spend hours and hours trying to understand our past, trying to discover the keys that are hidden in our present. But might delving deeper into the past help us to change our present?

Let me be the one to tell you that things aren’t always so.

Sometimes it’s not necessary for us to explore the past –to dwell on what happened or didn’t happen– in order to change what we don’t like about our present. Our present already has all the answers.

Just take a look at yourself.

Pay attention to your thoughts. To the decisions that you make and your way of acting or not acting.

Consider how you are feeling at this very instant and what state of being that feeling is drawing you towards.

Do you feel happy, optimistic, confident, satisfied with yourself, comfortable with your daily life; or, on the contrary, are you feeling unsatisfied, discontented, sad, yearning for personal change and improvement?

We can come to understand our past and there is no doubt that this is something fundamental in order to come to understand ourselves; however, understanding does not necessarily drive us to action. Action only comes through self-action.

The pain that I feel, the frustration that invades me, my anger because of the circumstances, the rage that I feel, ultimately, fear (it’s always fear) – these are all sensations that are linked to past experiences that, because of the intensity of the moment, have left us trapped in our memory, making us dependent on the experience through which we lived, the thing that aroused enough emotions to be logged and recorded in our mind.

This is the reason why our lives repeat the same situations over and over again – situations from which we really want to run. We have become addicted to those emotions of pain, of frustration, of anger, of rage, of fear, and our brain will look for its regular fix of said emotions continuously until it can confirm that everything has been recorded in our mind – everything that stays with us like a prophecy.

What can we do then?

It’s simple: we make a decision and take action.

I can decide to turn my pain into learning, my frustration into hope, my anger into understanding, my rage into calmness, my fear into love. That is the formula and I must not resist because I know that resistance generates persistence.

Today, we know that what interferes with any initiative for improvement and growth (personal, professional, social, organizational growth) –what stops any action plan designed for change and for achieving our success– is, precisely, our resistance to the change we wish to make.

And to what do we owe that resistance?

Mainly:

Our failure to understand the urgency and reasons for the change (or our failure to understand ourselves).

Believing that we can’t do it.

Because we don’t feel like it.

Change does not come, nor will it ever come, from outside us. If we are looking for a change in our life, in our partner, in our family, in our relationships, in our work, in our organization, in our country, in our world… it starts with us. We must look towards the last link of the human chain: the individual.

We are the change, the power to change is inside us.

As Gandhi told us, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”