You know how one day you wake up and go “holy crap how is it the middle of September already?!” Days fly by and weeks race past us until we’re closer to winter than we thought and somehow we have no recollection of that happening.
Obviously, we do because we were there, we lived those days, we experienced those moments. It’s just that we were living our lives and not paying attention to every second, so while in the moment we felt the days go by, we weren’t catching on to the greater speed of life.
The same thing happens with personal progress and change. Some days I wake up and when I’m really reflective and truly self-aware, I can see myself a week, a month, a year ago, and I recognize the difference. Only recently have I truly begun to take stock of who I am and how I’ve changed on a daily basis, rather than just in those intense moments of reflection.
See the thing is I have changed in ways I never could have predicted. In fact, I used to be terrified of change itself but here we are. Change was scary when I was thinking of it in very active, direct ways- like moving, or starting a new job. Things that were concrete and tangible. The hilarious (but like, ironic, not actually haha funny) thing is that what’s the changed the most about me is my level of mindfulness- or my ability to live in the moment and be present.
Let’s recap that: by living in the moment, I haven’t noticed how much I’ve changed each day.
Okay, so this is starting to get confusing. Let me try to break it down further.
As humans, we naturally grow, right? You don’t wake up one day when you’re 15 and suddenly you’re 4 inches taller than you were the day before. It happens slowly, until one day you stop growing and you look back at your tiny markings on your bedroom wall and you can see the progress over the months and years.
This is what happens internally too. Over time we grow, we progress, we change. If you’re like me and you really put intention into becoming a better, more stable person, then you’re probably paying attention to your daily routines and actions that are contributing to this change. I’ve been really focusing on being mindful in my everyday life and while I know, pretty deep inside my heart, that I am a very different person than I used to be, it can sometimes escape me on the little things.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is sometimes we forget how hard we’ve worked and how far we have come. It’s important to recognize the journey especially if it’s been a fairly tough one because it’s those tough moments and challenging obstacles that encouraged you to actually make the change and therefore are something to remember for the future as well.
Take the time to reflect on yourself. Don’t wait until you’re with friends you haven’t seen in forever and they say “wow, I’m so impressed with how far you’ve come” and you go “oh, really? I’ve come that far?”
Know it. Feel it. Be proud of it. These changes that are being made- they’re for you, remember?
