Bell KS I never considered myself afraid of change. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have told you I thrive on constant change, motion. Yet, for the past few weeks, I have been putting off change. I have procrastinated and thought it over a hundred times, with no results.
The other day, I was explaining this to my sister and asked her ‘what could possibly have changed’? She told me that I used to be in constant motion. I was always striving for more, to find happiness, to see more. I pushed my physical and mental health to the limit to keep going. This past year, I have learned to find happiness in the small moments. I have found a routine here in London, met amazing people and tried to finally come to a stop, get some rest. I stopped my forward motion to remain in the now.
This isn’t a bad thing; it was overdue. Yet, I am now at a point where I know that change needs to happen for me to keep growing. I wasn’t expecting it to be so difficult. So scary and overwhelming. I hadn’t been prepared for the feeling of being stationary – the safe familiarity.
Newton’s First Law of Motion, as I’m sure you remember from high school, states: ‘An object remains in the same state of motion unless a resultant force acts on it‘. This means a moving object will keep moving and a stationary object will remain stationary.
I am currently stationary. The reason change is so difficult this time around is because I need to come up with that resultant force to set myself in motion – to start off the change.
I’m not sure what that force could be. Passion? Desperation? Willpower? Duty? Or is it simply taking the first step? The motion can be tiny, the commitment minimal – as long as it is motion, it will set off the chain reaction. Maybe that is the solution.
I never expected to be scared of the loss of familiarity, yet here I am. It’s time to set myself in motion and see where it leads.
