Every human has four endowments – self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.
What causes a person to want to change?
We have all had chapters in our lives in which we awakened to the necessity of change. What stimulates that?
Change, by definition, is to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc., of (something) different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone
At a point in our life, an internal mechanism makes it very clear that some aspect of our life must undergo some form of revolution. You see this everywhere in life, with everyone you know. Something deep within starts to communicate to us that it is time and that we must act upon that. Catharsis releases pent up emotions which discharge some of the anxiety that is building up over the need for change.
Usually, circumstances in our life create those pent-up emotions and ultimately it is those feelings that stimulate the initial behavior that facilitates the change. Once it becomes clear to us deep within that the change is mandatory, we dig in and search for the right tools to leverage in that change.
As Steven Covey so aptly described, we are all endowed with a proper suite of tools and mindsets that facilitate these changes.
Self-awareness enables us to recognize how and why certain changes are critical to either our growth or our survival. It is the internal compass that enables us to look within and recognize that without said changes, we will either perish or not progress to the next stage of our desired evolution.
Conscience is a very different internal mechanism because conscience is directly related to a moral code. The moral code is most likely influenced by external variables such as society, peers, workplace and parental upbringing. These external stimuli are directly related to enabling one’s conscience to be a proper instrument of change. Different societies produce a different sense of morality and even if two people are growing up in the same country, with the same rules, their individual moral code may differ considerably as is the case currently in the United States and other parts of the world.
Independent will stems from a conscious determination that perhaps what society is condoning is not necessarily what the individual will believe in. Instead, individual will connotes the chosen determination of action based upon variables that an individual has prioritized to their specific mindset and belief.
Creative imagination is the human quality of projecting a vision of a new sense of stasis that the individual would like to experience and stimulates the behavior necessary for that individual to seek out or create that set of variables in their world.
Often times, a change of magnitude stems from a key incident such as the heart attack victim who changes their eating habits and exercise habits after the event. Or the reformed alcoholic who turns to religion as a replacement for the vacant feelings that facilitated their decline into alcoholism.
When a positive stimulation is capable of evoking a change, we label it inspiration and collectively, it is that inspiration that connects with our creative imagination which enables us to envision how disparate our lives will be if we are capable of enacting the necessary change within.
These four sets of filters give us cause to dig within and discover what we are truly made of.
The next time that you come to a conclusion that it is time for you to make a change, you would be well served to recognize and embrace these super powers with which you have been endowed by your creator.
Recognized them for the arsenal of strength that they bring to your decision for change and embrace each of them for their respective strengths, perspectives and deep internal motivations.
Happy Tuesday!
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