The transformation to the person you always were.

Somebody says, “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” Or, a few times I’ve heard, “Be the change to see the change.” These statements or sentences are very ambiguous; they’re not very clear about what it is that you should change. The person struggles and comes up with fancy ideas, changing his or her lifestyle, thinking that these are the changes that were supposed to be done or meant when it said, “Nothing changes if nothing changes” or “Be the change to see the change.”

We have to carefully examine when it is that we change. I have seen that we change when things happen to us or when we knowingly learn something. Things happen to us—I’m talking about the past—and the past gets imprinted on us. As a result, we change. After every bad or good experience, we learn something from it. Once the experience is over, that becomes part of us, and we behave based on the lessons learned from those experiences, whether good or bad.

When we say that we have to be the change to see the change, then change will require us to let go of experiences that we put together for our survival or for our defense. Those are the past moments, incidents, days, and hours. If we look at them, we get different sensations out of them. Sometimes these sensations are desirable, and sometimes they’re not. To let go of all those sensations, we have to look at the glue with which those incidents are attached to us. The glue is a mixture of regret, blame, sympathy, grief, fear, and loss. Sometimes there are even wins in those moments. That glue keeps all that past attached to us, and when the past is attached, it is hard to change. To change, you have to let go of the past. You might have heard many times, “Let go of the past.”

But what I’m suggesting is to simply examine the past—the glue with which that past is attached to you. 

That glue is composed of different emotions—regret, blame, sympathy, grief, fear, and loss. When you start looking at that glue, it gradually melts away, and the past leaves you. Not in a way that you can never know what was there in the past, but it becomes separate from you. That is the first step of changing—you change when you let go of your past. How do you let go of your past? By looking at the glue that is keeping it fixed to you.

So, once you let go of those good or bad incidents of the past, you feel that you are in the present moment being with yourself. “Be the change to see the change”—this is what it means to let go of the things that changed you. Now be the one who you always were. This is one dissection of these two sentences, and for the people looking for some change or transformation, it will come in handy.

YouTube Channel Name: Dr. Alka Chopra Madan

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