Hope and Change
I wrote this post several years ago. It’s still relevant today, as once again I contemplate changes in my writing career.
While I worked out at the gym, a woman and I talked about change. She’d seen a bumper sticker that read, Hope and Change: I’ll take the hope, you keep the change. That made me laugh, and I needed to laugh that day.
A big change for me, back in August 2011, was the loss of my beautiful, elderly Akita dog. She loved me unconditionally and thought her job was to soften some of my harder edges, and she taught me more about love than any human ever has. She’d stop to meet and greet everyone, and she helped me to make friends in my new community.
Change is often hard to accept, yet when we embrace it new insights and adventures can bloom. I think the key to being happy in life is to keep learning, growing, and changing with the times. To grow, we learn, and in learning we teach. In teaching we lead, and in leading we make mistakes. Making mistakes reminds us that we’re human. When we learn from our mistakes and embrace new things we cause forward movement, and when we work to change things in ourselves it will cause things around us to change. I like that last part of the sentence, and I’m almost certain it came from Dr. Wayne Dyer (I read a ton of information about change and personal transformation, so I can’t be positive) but let’s give it to him. : )
Truthfully, I think we’re a lot like snakes. Not all slimy and slithery with fangs that can poison, but in respect to their skin. We need to shed our skin every once in a while, just like the snake does, and leave that old crusty thing by the side of the road so we can move on to embrace the new. We must make changes to prevent ourselves from falling into resignation, or doom and gloom, or I’m-too-old-for-that thinking. Life in the same dry old snake skin can prevent movement, and it lacks in luster. We want to show all of the shiny colors of our skin.
Today, I venture into another change as I send off a manuscript to an independent copyeditor. I have a new shiny skin. Yay! It’s only a first step, but I’m exploring, growing, and I may yet become a hybrid author. So what about you? How do you accept change? Do you withdraw, battle through, dive straight in, or learn all there is to know and proceed with caution?
Robena Grant writes romantic suspense, and contemporary romance. Her latest novel: Gone Tropical 
is now in world wide release and available in print and all eBook formats.
To learn more about Robena please visit www.robenagrant.com or catch up with her on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+
