Being pro-active pays-off or “Who moved my cheese ?”
If you have read the book “Who moved my cheese ?”, you know it is all about dealing with change in life. Change can be a blessing or a curse depending on your perspective and on whether you are in control of what’s changing or whether you are a victim of change. Often people are scared by change, particularly if it hits us by surprise and if the outcome or end result is unknown. Yet, here are the truths about change:
1. Change is going to happen
2. You can choose to try to fight it or adapt – or even better: be pro-active and create the change YOUR way !
3. Although you can’t stop things from changing, you can control how you respond/react to them
4. Everyone reacts to change differently5. Often when a door closes, a new, “better” one opens – but you need to choose to see it !
Yesterday, I experienced a real life example of these principles. Listen to this:
I could not believe what I saw in the letter, but indeed, our landlord was telling us with 6 month’s notice that he was not going to renew the tenancy agreement for our villa beyond December. He was going to demolish our entire compound of 10 villas built only 4 years ago ! If you know Dubai, you know that it has become common practise to “re-develop” plots to increase the profits. It is also a way to kick-out tenants with the view to charge new tenants a multiple of the previously charged rent (rent increases to existing tenants are limited to 7% p.a.).
When we rented the villa 4 years ago, the rent was at the top end of the market, but with rents rising 30% p.a., I knew that villas like ours where now being let at double the price we were paying. Finding an affordable villa that was still near my daughter’s school (traffic in Dubai is terrible) could have become a nightmare for us … but instead, after the initial surprise about the notice, I just couldn’t help but smile….
We had spend the past 6 months trying to work out how we really wanted life to be for us, where we really wanted to live ourselves, where we would be able to do the things that deep inside us mattered most to us and had meaning and ….where we really wanted our daughter to grow up. And the result was, that we took the decision to move, move away from the stress, the city life and lack of nature in Dubai ! Yes, we had decided months ago to not only move locations but also scale down and simplify our life so that we could do more of the things that mattered to us, be the type of wife/husband, mother/father, friend/colleague etc we really wanted to be and create those events and experiences that we would be proud of in old age.
Yes, we were going to leave anyway 
!
I felt so relieved, and so happy. The little voices in our heads had surely tried to convince us to keep things as they were “Why bother changing ? It is so much work. Just stay and enjoy life. You have it good, don’t be ungrateful for what you have…” The little voices were trying to convince us to just stay one more year, earn some more money, just keep going one more year. But we had finally chosen not to listen to them and go anyway. We committed ourselves to a new place in beautiful nature, where we would be able to spend more time with each other and live on a lower budget. And it felt so right.
I was so glad that we had not waited for things around us to change, holding on to the hope that what we liked about Dubai would stay the same… I suddenly felt (rather than just knew) what it meant to be in control of your life …rather than being controlled by life’s events. We had created our own change, the change we really wanted, the change that was surely hard work, too, but had a clear direction for us and hence felt wonderful !
And the best of it all….I know how to repeat this !
If you spend the time to figure out what really matters to you, clarify your values and those of the loved one’s around you, you have a guiding light for your path ahead. You can initiate the change that is needed to make you live more aligned with what matters to you, to have more integrity. This is a choice and you have to be pro-active. But as a result, you will change your life – rather than your life changing you.
Your Perfect Summer Holiday in the Bavarian Alps
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