As much as it intimidates me, I thrive in the face of change. It took me a long time to recognise that the resistance that would often overwhelm me when I was navigating my way through new territory was actually steering me toward a great personal breakthrough.
mountain ranges, Ikaria
In the past I would wrestle with this feeling when faced with new challenges. I felt completely out of my depth and my automatic response would be one of panic. Instead of embracing the opportunity that I was being presented with and seeing it as a chance to extend myself, I would automatically put the brakes on and question my abilities.
The areas of our lives that matter to us most are often the ones that bring out our greatest vulnerability. It’s where we reveal our deepest selves. Treading foreign ground, whether in a writing project, a new creative venture or exploring the next phase of the journey with my business, commands me to change. It invites me to move in a direction I’ve not approached before. It pushes open parts of myself that are unfamiliar and this can be confronting.
church, Ikaria
When we stay contained within what’s familiar, there’s little room for personal growth. When we face something new, the enormity of how we approach it can be daunting. But that’s only because it’s foreign. It rattles the foundations of what we know, how we approach and see the world. It asks us to look through a different lens and this means shifting our perspective.
cross, Lemnos
Each time I’ve stepped toward the unfamiliar, I’ve been gifted with the greatest personal accomplishment in facing the challenge. The harder it was, the more enriching my experience of it. I often felt like I was being completely pulled apart, out of my depth. Stepping through that feeling and meeting myself on the other end always showed me just how valuable and necessary that process was in deconstructing the rigidity of where I think my limits lie and how much I’m prepared to extend myself and uncover the depth of what I feel I have the ability to achieve.
abandoned house, Lemnos
The more proximate we get towards our greatest discomfort, the more we extend the range of our abilities. We recognise how limiting moving within the parameters of our safety net can be. Stepping through the discomfort forces us to reflect on how we perceive challenges. What we initially felt daunted by is suddenly diminished. The process of moving through it serves to reveal as much about our ability to extend ourselves when we never thought we could as it is a lesson in recognising how much we can achieve in accomplishing what we’d initially regarded as difficult.
Happy Travels…Paula x
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