Day 195 Y25 Thought of Day_Accepting Change

Change is hardest at the beginning, messiest in the middle and best at the end.

Robin Sharma

I had a conversation along these lines with a friend earlier today.

I was telling her about the current changes at work that I’m dealing with. It was a change that I initially felt dreadful about because I’m being thrust into unknown territory again.

I had to leave my old team whom I had built an awesome working relationship, to head up some corporate initiatives for a new team that had been fumbling through the organizational restructuring when it took effect this year.

I’ve always prided myself on being adaptable to change, but man was it hard! The anxiety of having more questions than answers was overwhelming. Shifting perspectives and finding a positive starting point to move forward took every ounce of my mental and emotional energy.

The saving grace is that the person heading that team is someone I worked with before and had a good working relationship with. It gave me the confidence and motivation to turn things around for the better, not just for me but also for the others who were experiencing the effects of the change as I had.

I realized that my life had been a series of such changes. I often don’t see where it is leading me at the beginning. In hindsight, it was easier to see how the dots connected that led me to where I am now.

Moving to Canada was one of them. I never envisioned living in a foreign country because I was happy where I was. I had a good job. Friends and loved ones are around me. A loving husband and a wonderful son who make up our small unit of a family.

But life pulled the rug under me by taking away that one person who held it altogether for me. I lost sight of who I am and where I was going.

In the course of adapting to that major life change, starting over in a new country felt like a great, fresh start for me and my son.

So here we are, our lives being enriched by the awesome experiences and wonderful people that living in Canada has afforded us.

Immigrant life is not all great, of course. I’m still in the process of working through the pathway to getting permanent residency. That’s a messy state as it is right now.

Nevertheless, I truly believe that all will turn out for the best, when we come to the end of this journey.

A lot of the turning points in our lives were hard to ignore, because they are often accompanied by change.

The confusion, struggle, and terrifying step into the unknown were never random. They were life’s way of redirecting our path so we wouldn’t settle. They were shaping us to become stronger, wiser, and the person we were supposed to become.