Change

Brian was mad.  REALLY mad.We were engaged.  He knew me better than anyone, and yet...he was still losing the game.Surrounded by my family in Idaho, we were playing one of those games where you are trying to guess what other players would say (ie: if you knew the other players well...you did well in the game).So why was he losing?Change.  The reason was that I had changed, grown up, matured.  Brian knew the woman I was, but my family knew the Holly I had been.  (And I, being ultra competitive, saw this as an opportunity to really beat him in the game😜).I have been thinking about the idea of change a lot lately.  There are many words for it: repentance, maturity, personal development, growth.  However you label it, the pattern is essentially the same.  You look at yourself and your life, and you decide things can be better.  It just requires a little something called change.But change is HARD.I don’t think anyone will dispute this.  We all know it is.  What I have noticed is how people around us can make it SO MUCH HARDER.My daughter has had some experience with this.  Because she has ADHD, she matured much slower than many of her peers.  That made her life difficult at times.  She, like all of us, has changed.  Believe me, she is well aware of the awkward moments and stupid things she has done.  They are called regrets, and we all have them.Want to know what makes things harder? Friends (I use the term loosely), and sometimes adults telling her how glad they are that she is different now, because they sure hated her in 6th grade!Um...thank you?As I have watched her struggle to become a better person, I have been amazed at the people who continually bring up her past.  Sometimes her “friends” would gather and have a good laugh at some idiotic thing Samantha had said.  You know who wasn’t laughing?  Samantha.  Changing your life is ESPECIALLY hard when those around you don’t believe that you can.I have been mulling this over in my mind for a while now.  And then, one day, I had a lightbulb moment.  I wish it had been a happy lightbulb, but it was more of a brutally honest one.  Sadly, I saw the same behavior in myself.   I was so busy hating “them”, that I ignored the many times I brought up her past errors as evidence to strengthen my own position.  I told her repeatedly, “You can do it!  I believe in you!”  But in my heart, I never believed she could.I was the person making her personal development SO MUCH HARDER.  And that felt awful.  I was part of the “them”.  Ugh.It’s time, once again, for change.  I think all of us can do better and be better if we want to, including me.  There will never be value in keeping people tied to their mistakes forever...even my own kids.I KNOW I don’t want to be part of the group that makes change harder.  Do you?