How do you feel when you experience big changes in your life?

• Do you feel excited and open or do you feel nervous and jumpy?
• Are you welcoming of change or do you often find yourself on the back foot in reaction mode?
• Does it feel smooth and positive or bumpy and uncomfortable?
• Are you able to sense early-on the direction that life is moving in or are you surprised and caught off-guard by the events of your life?

One thing we can all say is that things don’t stay the same forever. In fact everything and everyone is evolving. However at times this may seem to be smoother and more graceful and at other times it feels rougher and more difficult.

It helps to understand the two types of change that tend to play out in our lives.

The first type of change is what I call prospective change. When change is prospective we are on the front foot, moving with the evolutionary flow of life.

The second type of change is reactive change. This is when we are consciously or unconsciously going against the evolutionary flow of life.

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Let’s line these two up against each other and see what they look like:

Prospective change                                              Reactive change

feels smooth                                              feels rough

respond quickly                                         react slowly

leaping into the unknown                          waiting for everything to be ‘just right’

no over-thinking                                        too much thinking and trying to figure it out

no suffering                                               suffering

feeling clear and resolute                          indecision and hesitation abound

a sense of enthusiasm                               fearful and anxious

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Prospective change happens when we see the direction nature is going in and we move fearlessly in that direction. Reactive change happens when we miss the cues that nature is giving us and we end up moving in the wrong direction.

The more we can tune in to what nature is up to the smoother change will be. To tune in we need to be perceptive, calm and willing to step out of the known.