Our last chat had me on fire!!  Wooo weeee.  This Irish-Italian lady was getting on her soap box again.  Watch out…but as always it was for a good cause.  In our chat Strength and Courage we chatted about addiction and the state of treatment in America.  Given that I have worked in the field for over 15 years, it is something that I have become passionate about over time.  I have seen a lot of change during this time as well as have gone through a whole lot of changes myself.  Change is the topic of our chat today.  Change is just something that we can’t get away from.  It is always with us.  As much as we resist the process of change, it happens anyway.  God people here in Boston are surely ready for some weather change for sure!  But you watch, when it happens we will be complaining yet again.   Even though we crave change, we inherently resist it; sometimes at the same time.  We want to change and stay the same all at once.  We want the bad stuff to go away without experiencing any of the growing pains.

Human beings are such pleasure seeking creatures. Hedonism rules the brain once that pleasure center gets tapped.  Just like the lab rat in the cocaine research we are hitting the proverbial bar seeking more and more and more. It is no wonder that in order to make significant change occur we have to almost blow up what is existing; kinda like doing a gut renovation.  Well that was always my plan with my career; to be a construction worker of sorts.  Back when I decided to go into social work it was the social change aspect of social work that drew me in.  I wanted to work on helping forge new roads.  I think back then I had some sort of 1960’s idea of what social work school would be like.  That is until I chose, yes I chose, to go to Boston College where there was certainly no picketing, protesting or much social action taking place. Who chooses to go to a wealthy Jesuit college and seek revolution?  Yup this one.  Just a decision in a long line of others where my intention to do one thing ends up blindly leading me in a very different direction.  Almost like I am guiding myself into ways of  living life far more challenging then it needs to be. Well here’s hoping that pattern is beginning to break!  So yes, BC was not peace, love and happiness per se but it was the place where that began for me; oddly enough. And so the choice was made and the shift began.  Along the road there have been many twists and turns but in choosing to create my yoga project, Soba Yoga, http://yourwholehealing.com/soba-yoga/ , I am coming back home.

Forging forward and building new pathways can take various forms.  We can see behavior change as it occurs to us individually as well as on a macro level in our communities.  But whether it is on the micro or macro level, change comes with challenge.  It comes with the need for letting go of what was so that one can come into what is and what will be. For a person with an addiction, they need to truly let go of using as an option in life in order to forge forward in creating a new path.  It can start from a sense of hope for a different way but it can not end with hope.  Hope alone is limiting.  We can’t hope our way into a different life.  We need to take action.  Any step forward is a step in the right direction.  I come from a long line of outspoken people.  It is not difficult for me to speak my mind.  But for a long time I would do so but change nothing.  I would rage against the establishment but do not much about it; this despite the fact that clearly I was meant to lead.  In return I only became angrier. It wasn’t until I began to make changes internally that they began to manifest more externally.  In the past it was far easier to just be angry.  I had plenty of people I could get into it with.  Many people who also wanted to fight the good fight without truly doing much about it.  These days I still find that internal fire brewing but I am taking action.  If I don’t like something about my life, rather than sitting and stewing in it,  I will empower myself to change it.  Acceptance that life is ever changing has helped me to live within that structure.  If life is always going to change, than I can make changes proactively that can improve things before they get worse.  Let’s face it, as the saying goes if you are not being part of the solution, you are definitely being part of the problem.  If you are going to spend time complaining about things, you might as well spend some of that time doing something about it.

So for today, what you are going on work on changing?  The attitude we inhabit often says a lot about what will happen to us and around us.  When feeling stuck in a rut maybe a shift in perspective internally can begin to help the external.  Well that’s what I have been working on these days anyway.  The snow will melt, opportunities will come, I will return to full health.  Life will change in good ways and not so good ways; that you can make a bet on.  Life is always changing.  Instead of getting on the soap box, how about getting on the little engine that could and start chugging away!  What little step forward will you make today to Blaze a Bold Trail?  How can you put Hope into Action?

Cheers!