There are things about ourselves we want to change. It is not that we don’t know what needs change or that we lack the knowledge of what we need to do. Yet we fail repeatedly, and over time this builds frustration within. We often wonder why we are not able to bring about change in spite of having the ability. The answer lies in four subtle things we may have overlooked.

If we are not able to sustain our efforts to bring about change, it could well be that we are actually enjoying the thing we say we want to change. We may want to change our diet, but our enjoyment of desserts is stronger than our willpower. We may want to exercise regularly, but we enjoy that extra hour of sleep which we don’t want to sacrifice. We fail to change when our temptations are stronger than our conviction.

Sometimes, in spite of the enjoyment factor going away, we still find our mind running towards things we want to avoid. We don’t realise it, but the thought patterns have created a habit that we find difficult to break. We fail to change when our attachments are stronger than our discipline.

We may be good at heart but may carry personality traits we are not happy about. Often we find ourselves repeating the same mistakes for which we have suffered in the past. In a sense, we feel helpless when the emotion rises beyond a point. We fail to change when our emotions are stronger than our awareness.

We can only drop the lower if we attach ourselves to the higher. We know what we don’t want, but we have not developed clarity and enthusiasm around what we want. If the mind is not inspired, it naturally gravitates to its lower state. We fail to change when we don’t give ourselves an inspiring vision of what change looks like.

It is always easy to see the change others need to bring about, and very difficult to implement the same changes in ourselves. But when we equip ourselves with conviction, discipline, awareness and vision, not only will we bring about the change in ourselves, we will influence the much needed change in the world around us.

(Picture-Romerberg,Germany)