Change is all in the Mind?

Hi and Welcome to the A & J PEI Treasures E Jean Simpson Author Blog Post and Podcast. I’m your host, Jean coming to you from the beautiful Province of Prince Edward Island, Canada!! The blog post and podcast is an opinion piece and only reflects this author’s opinion and not that of any other entity. I hold no designations in politics, economics or medicine. I am a humanitarian and speak from that viewpoint only. Whether you agree or not, at least I hope it makes you think. People often wait for retirement to enjoy life or for the next holiday, etc. You need to understand that life is what happens while you’re waiting. If you want to find out more, then stay tuned!

The past month has been one of stress, illnesses, life and death. I had a sick family member and had to go to another Province to help out looking after things. I’m pleased that things are now in recovery mode in that area. However, as I was looking after things with family on one side, I had my husband come down with Shingles. It is one of the 20% of the cases they talk about that comes with debilitating pain. So, there have been a few trips to emergency and some less than stellar evenings. In the meantime, I also lost one of my Uncles and earlier in the year a cousin. Now this brings me to the starting point for the blog post. My one Uncle (I’ve simplified things by calling him Uncle). He had worked for the mines all his life. He had prepared for retirement and looked forward to it. Then cancer. Then a reoccurrence. He died at 64. A year before his actual retirement. This is where, dear readers and listeners, we need to step back and look. There is always something we are waiting for. We wait for things to get better. We wait for retirement, we wait for our next birthday…we wait. Here’s the thing…how long do we wait? Do we know how long we have to wait and what we wait for? What is the benefit to this waiting game?

I have determined that waiting is something that you can’t do. You need to seize the moment. You need to believe that we (yes, we) can create miracles. We need to believe that we can fix this planet. I mean, it’s not like we can wait for a new planet to come around the corner. The more we ‘wait for things to get better’. The more we wait for anything, the less we move forward. I think waiting is the big time killer of life. We need to take more chances. We need to work toward moving forward. Generally in any area, the local populace is bound to think you’re crazy. Maybe they are not wrong. It takes a special kind of crazy to dedicate oneself to improving things and believing it can work. Think about it, I actually BELIEVE that we can change the medical system. I actually believe we can take it forward and if we ask the right questions and find the right resources and change out what isn’t working for what will work, we can become a shining example to the rest of the country and move my beautiful Province and Country forward into a glorious era. If we get the right people, who know about the system and its difficulties on board with being on the ground floor to change, then we have a better chance of lasting change. Tell me a better alternative? More can be accomplished by believing than ever will by disbelief. Now, one of the things about change is there is no real mystery to it. The article I link here and in the podcast write up gives a short version of what to do to make change. https://knowhow.ncvo.org.uk/your-team.... It is in no way rocket science.

As David J. Schwartz, author of The Magic of Thinking Big said, “Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, really believe, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution.” So, I think the first step is stop waiting...waiting on things to change. Waiting on the world to change the way you want it. Complaining about the problems that exist. If you want a better world, then you have to be unafraid to do the work. Not afraid to be thought of as crazy. You need to believe with your whole being that you can move forward, that the world can move forward. You need to have goals and you need to have dreams. If you have to work behind the scenes, roll up your sleeves and do grunt work to get that dream, then do it. Guess what not all dreams, jobs or even parenting is a cushy high paying job. If you believe in what you do, then you do what you believe. What could be better?

As Michelle Obama said, “When you're really trying to make serious change, you don't want people to get caught up in emotion because change isn't emotion. Because change isn't emotion. Its real work and organization and strategy... that's just the truth of it. I mean, you pull people in with inspiration, but then you have to roll up your sleeves and you've got to make sacrifices and you have got to have structure.” So, the ‘rah rah’ sessions…what I term the motivational speaking is an important part of creating the living dream. It’s the part that gets people excited because they can see that someone believes in their ability to reach the end goal. It’s imperative really. If you can’t see the goal, you’re not going to be motivated to make the change. So, there is an importance to the belief in the goal that cannot be underestimated. First step to reaching any goal is a belief that it can be reached.

As Christopher Reeve is credited with saying, “So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” So, first there is the dream…and sometimes it seems getting there will be insurmountable. However, the more you work at believing it, the more likely it looks like it might happen. I always admired Alice in Wonderland as a source of great inspiration and am reminded of this quote, “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” – Lewis Carroll. It becomes easy. Life isn’t easy and some things feel impossible…but the more you work at it the more possible it becomes. Add to that, “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” – Paulo Coelho. This is the reason a lot of dreams and a lot of goals are never met. People fear failure so they don’t even try. They don’t want to take the chance to try to make changes because they are afraid it won’t work. When they hit the first road block, they crumble and retreat.

I think we need to acknowledge that “Things move along so rapidly nowadays that people saying: “It can’t be done,” are always being interrupted by somebody doing it.”…it’s been attributed to everyone from Confucius to the magazine Puck. No matter who said it, it is certainly a motivational quote. I would add that if you don’t believe something can be done, then step aside and let other people roll up their sleeves and do it. If this is a quote, let me know where it is, I couldn’t find it. So, until I can find it, I guess I have to accept attribution for it currently unless told differently…LOL. The most interesting thing about this quote, it belonged to an older time…so we have been seeing innovations and making things work that should not be possible for a long time. It is part of human history that we want to be able to do the impossible and thus make it possible. The one thing I know is that unless someone does something about the situation, someone believes it can be done, no one will attempt anything and we’ll still be waiting for the world to become a better place. Without clear goals and actionable steps, nothing will happen. No matter how hard or how much work, we can enact change. We can improve things. We can work toward being a better version of ourselves. We can work on teaching ourselves and our children to be honest and tolerance is better than hate. We can give ourselves and our children and their children a better future, and a health care system to be proud of.

When I think of someone who had a dream that is still being talked about today (sadly we haven’t reached that goal as of yet, but it is still being worked toward and he is still inspiring millions), I think of Martin Luther King Jr. I must agree with the quote’s spirit if not the words exactly as they are. People who think they have a right to put down someone for being different. Put down someone for being of a certain race, religion, orientation, etc. are never going to believe in a true dream. As King Jr has said, "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." What he says here is true. People who believe that they are in the right to put down someone for being different will not have actionable goals. They just fire up the populace with no positive outcome in sight. Eventually there is a legal challenge. They just send the world to spin their tires and stay in place for a time. I go back to Obama’s quote on working toward a goal. It takes sacrifice. The thing with these negative goals…this perpetuating hatred of others, is that they are easily shot down. I’ve seen it over and over online. Someone puts out hate against, LGBTQ and it is not in keeping with the values of the country they purport to support. The inalienable right (According to the Declaration of Independence to life, liberty and happiness)…I don’t remember them being made for just certain groups. Religious intolerance against other religions or certain groups. They run counter to their underlying principles. So, their goals are only accepted by the few and not the many. Eventually they lose and are bitter and hateful toward people. The arguments are shot down. This doesn’t stop them from spitting them out, but it does annoy a great many. The main point is that negative goals, hating goals are not actionable over the longer term and even if they get some action, they get shot down as being against the tenants of the society in general. It just leads to legal battles which they invariably mess about with and it goes to a higher court. All they do is waste time and money trying to reach goals of hate and divisiveness. So one other thing that is important is that the goal be for the greater good and that is more likely to make it more easily actionable. Positive goals are actionable. Belief in the ability to change the planet, a certain area, a protocol or lives for the better is actionable…because it will be accepted by many and will be something that attracts people to work on it. People working on it will make it more likely to be successful.

So, what do we know about dreams of a better world. They won’t wait. We have to do stuff about it now. We have to BELIEVE that we can have a better world. We have to inspire others to believe that we can have a better world. We have to have actionable goals. We have to want to inspire others to make things better. As I say, the world can be a better place, we can work toward making it so. Select what you want to improve. Make sure it is a worthy goal. Then put some energy into it and get others on board. You can make this a better place. I can’t do it alone, you can’t do it alone, but together we can do it. We can find actionable goals, we can find ways to make it happen. We can find ways to respect each other and be tolerant and still make a living. It is not impossible. People have been doing the impossible since time immemorial. There has always been something impossible that has been accomplished because someone BELIEVED it could happen! So, it’s up to you dear readers and listeners. Do you want to wait or do you want to do something useful while you are waiting? I leave the end result up to you. As Brent Butt,
Canadian comedian has said, “It's weird when people mock others for being "woke". Like that's a bad thing. Like it's better to be "mentally unengaged with your eyes closed in the dark". I have to agree with him. It’s never too late to be ‘woke up’.

Thanks for listening to my podcast and/or reading my blog post and thanks for your interest in A & J PEI Treasures!

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