For many years of my life, I was terrified of change. The fear of the unknown. The loss that might come from it. Would I have the ability to handle it?

However, I’ve always been someone who bores easily with robotic routine. I love the comfort of my normal routines but having new experiences out of my comfort zone feeds my soul. I like the security to keep repeating what I’m good at but I crave learning something new. It electrifies me and recharges my life. While I hold on tight to my oldest and dearest friends, I also love the magic in meeting new people and making new friends. I feel grounding roots in revisiting my favorite places, but experiencing a new piece of earth invigorates and excitingly educates me. This is why I have learned to love and embrace change rather than be afraid of it.

Change is really the only “constant” we have in life. Unless we learn to embrace it, we will always feel unsettled. Resisting it causes us anxiety and exhaustion. Embracing it brings inner peace and tremendous growth. The difference between resisting or embracing is either a negative life or a positive one.

Right now, my life is full of change. I wanted to write about my philosophy of positively embracing change as a therapeutic reminder to myself and to also help anyone else needing it too. I have a lot of personal change just with myself as individual–but also with my family unit who has been the center of my life. My oldest daughter moved out on her own. My middle is graduating college and she will live where she finds her job. My youngest is graduating high school and she’ll leave for college in less than 4 months. My husband and I will soon be empty nesters asking ourselves what we want the rest of our lives to look like. My step-dad for 41 years just passed away this week. All of this on top of each other could have made a younger me buckle, but change has shown me it’s all a sign of a full, well-loved, well-lived life!

Reasons to Fall in Love with Change:

• Change closes the doors to bad situations and black spots in life. Change causes it to finally end. It moves us forward.
• Change opens new exciting chapters to our story. It provides a chance for fresh new words and pages!
• Change keeps life from being boring. The same routines make us feel stale and like sleepy robots.
• Change adds mystery to our life. When we aren’t sure what lies ahead in the dark, we are forced to be more alert. It causes us to be more open, seeing and hearing things like we didn’t before.
• Change opens new doors. There are new people to love and to love us. There are new opportunities to make our life more exciting!
• Change brings valuable lessons and better perspective. Every time we go through a change, we learn so much about life and ourselves. It makes us look at everything through a fresher, sharper, wiser lens. 
• Change makes us more loving and more compassionate. With every new change comes an experience that helps us see what walking in someone else’s shoes feels like. 
• Change makes us more flexible. There are many things every single day we can’t control. When we learn flexibility, we get to have inner peace when things don’t go as we planned. When we learn how to be flexible, we become less afraid we’ll break.
• Change builds strength and resilience. I devoted a whole chapter to resilience in my book because I believe resilience is our most important life skill. Resilience is like a muscle. The more we use it, the stronger it gets. Every time we go through a tough or challenging change, it builds our resilience. It shows us, we will be ok. We will be just fine.

Spring is the perfect time to plant our intentions to grow a more positive mindset about change. There are so many signs in Spring from God, the Universe and Nature that assure us change brings us faith, light, hope, joy and love. Change helps us grow stronger and more beautiful.

Sharon is the author of “Grow Yourself Beautiful”. For more information on her book, visit www.sharoncaldwellpeddie.com,sharonpeddieblog.com

• https://www.amazon.com/Grow-Yourself-Beautiful-Following-Focusing-ebook/dp/B07J5YQ4VC
• https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/grow-yourself-beautiful-sharon-caldwell-peddie/1129704738?ean=9781532057342