When the Winds of Change Come, Build a Windmill

Change. People fear it. It’s frightening. We can’t control it. We know it’s coming. It always comes. It’s inevitable. When the winds of change come, we have two choices. We can build a wall and hunker down and hope it passes. Or we can build a windmill to bring a newfound energy into our lives.

People gravitate to what’s familiar to them. What they know. It doesn’t matter that what they know might or could be bad or wrong or bad for them, it’s what they know. People can carry bad habits and/or mindsets for years and become comfortable with them. They get used to things a certain way in our lives. It’s familiar.

Definition of winds of change

: forces that have the power to change things — used generally to mean change is going to happen.

The winds of change have begun to blow.[1]

This is the major reason we don’t like change. Familiar has an outcome we know. Change does not. This is the principal reason people fear it.

Change means uncertainty, something unknown. Something registers in people’s brains that triggers that uncomfortable feeling of the unknown. They imagine many outcomes, and none of them are good.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

George Bernard Shaw

The problem is that the one thing in life that is certain is that it will change. We have no control of it, ever. Never have, and never will have. If you think you do, ask the rain to stop in the middle of the storm. Won’t happen. You’ll just have to wait it out like the rest of us.

We can do our best to project a positive outcome in our lives in our minds, but unless your compass has been calibrated and maintained there is a strong chance that when you set sail of that small island in the middle of nowhere you will get lost.

You have two choices when the winds of change blow:

1. Build a wall and wait out the winds of change.
2. Build a windmill and use the energy of the storm to your benefit.

When confronted with change, most people prefer to hunker down and try to wait it out. “We have never done it this way in the past.” “I just don’t like it that way.” “I won’t do it that way, so I quit.”

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Leo Tolstoy

I have a friend who faced severe health issues because of certain life choices. After being diagnosed, they were given the information of what needed to change in their lives to correct the problem along with surgery.

The person agreed to change habits in order to receive the surgery and did for a while. But it wasn’t long before the old habits crept in and they were right back where they started, only now in debt.

Rather than resist the changes needed and dictated by life, build a windmill. The windmill uses the surrounding force to convert otherwise useless energies around it into a positive energy force that can be converted into positive and useful energy.

Really, it’s all about our perspective and how we look at things in these situations. How we perceive problems is how we decide on what action to take to fix it. If what we perceive to be true is actually not true, then we are making critical decisions based on inaccurate perceptions.

As an example of this, we can be heard saying that the sun is setting over the horizon as if it is moving in a circular path around us. Yet isn’t it actually true that it is standing still while the Earth rotates around the sun?

Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Being open to change allows for the positive forces in our lives to manifest and work to our benefit. Remember, the winds of change will blow whether we like it, so why not use them to our advantage rather than hunker down and get our roofs blown off?

I will leave you with this thought. Change is an attitude. If you say yes to change, you are opening yourself up to a new beginning with new and exciting outcomes. If you say you can’t change, you are really saying you won’t change. And that’s another article.

That why I say When the Winds of Change Come, Build a Windmill.

Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.

Margaret Mead

I’ve written another article that you might like. You can read it here:

IN THE END ALL THAT MATTERS IS WHAT YOU DO

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Remember: Happiness is a choice, so be happy.

[1] “Winds of change.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/winds%20of%20change. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.