When You Realize You Have To Change

Over the course of our lives we go through many experiences that shape us — or at least they try to. If we are blind and deaf to what each experience teaches us, then our character cannot be shaped. And that’s the problem many of us carry inside. Our human heart is just so full of itself, so convinced that it knows better, that it can never be wrong, that we often miss the learning point in an experience.

When it hits us — the rude awakening of being shown we ARE wrong — we can react in one of two ways. We can wake up and humbly learn our lesson, or we can stubbornly dig our heels in and maintain our pride. The first means we learn and grow; the second means we have become too proud to be taught something new.

“And be renewed in the spirit of your mind,” said the apostle Paul in Ephesians 4.23. Few, but deep words.

Our mind needs renewal. It does because it gets old. As the years go by, if we don’t keep refreshing the spirit of our mind we start getting really old spiritually and mentally. Old ideas, old ways, resistance to change. We stop growing. We get left behind. Younger (and fresher) minds begin to pass us by. And we become a boring, bitter, resentful caricature of our old self. And then we blame the world for having changed.

“Change is difficult but often essential to survival.” – Les Brown

So next time your current views or beliefs are challenged by different, better ones, don’t be proud. Go ahead and change yourself. It’s for your good.

Bishop Renato Cardoso