– by Stacey Terry
It’s the summer solstice! The longest day of the year… a day for a new season, and a reminder that things in the natural world are always changing, always moving towards something new.
How do you feel about change? How do you deal with it?
I always used to think of change as something dreadful, something to endure, a trial to get through until I could find some equilibrium again. My perspective always tended to be negative, and so, any time life sent me on detours, (which was often… and still is) I spent more time kicking and screaming than paying attention to whether the detour might actually be a better road than the one I was on before.
If you’ve never read it, I suggest you find an hour in your life somewhere to enjoy this absolutely 
beautiful book: Who Moved My Cheese? heheh… if you can forgive all the metaphoric references to dairy products, this short little book will change your mind about the lifelong benefits of trying new things. Essentially, the things or “the cheese” that we enjoy in life are never guaranteed to be in the same place. We have to be prepared to move and to act courageously to get what we want. When the cheese and the circumstances of our lives change, we have to change with it.
And if reading that delightful and insightful book doesn’t inspire you to see change as something positive, if you’re still clinging to your excuses to stay where you are, even when what you’re doing is no longer working, then perhaps you need to read a letter The Green Smoothie Queen received last week:
Good Day Smoothie Queen;
Just a little note to introduce myself. Millicent is my name – better known to my son and close friends as “Marvelous Millie”.
My intention is to get rid of all the ailments that are trying to attach themselves to this wonderful and fearfully made body that the Creator has given me. I am heading into my 76th year of life (75 1/8 to be exact), so in order to make changes I must stop doing the things I always did to get different results.
As of this day I am looking at a new way of living; therefore, I am embarking on the 3-Day Mini-Course for starters. I will keep you informed of my progress. Thanks for your help.
Millicent
There it is… plain and simple: “I must stop doing the things I always did to get different results”.
I. Love. This. Letter.
No matter what the excuse… age, social custom, resources, whatever… if you want to change, if you want to achieve a different result, you CAN.
It can feel hard.
Overwhelming.
Remember, there are years and years of momentum built up behind you, patterns of thinking that you might be unconscious of… all of it pointing and feeling like “I can’t.”
But you can.
Millie can.
I can.
And more importantly, WE can.
We just need to share support. We need to share strategies. We just need to keep moving, a little bit every day… or even every other day, or even every other week or month… just KEEP MOVING. Keep growing little by little. Even changing your perspective about change IS change… (if you followed that one!) I don’t know how many times Tera has told me to “be gentle with yourself“… to “pursue change on a gradient”. Slowly, those words catch me now… both when I’m making positive changes and trying to figure my way out of negative slumps.
When I’m in a downward spiral, the only way out is to change my direction…even just a little. These are my strategies for when I’m in the “wah and woe” zone (Be sure to comment and tell us what YOU do to change directions!).
- Feeling sluggish – I change my routine in some way: add sleep, go outside for a walk, remove sugar, listen to a meditation/inspirational mp3, or our favourite around here: add more greens to my diet! Usually it’s the greens that win. Green smoothies have become my one dependable lifeline. Even when I don’t feel like it, bananas and spinach are easy and I always have both on hand frozen. No excuses there.
- Find myself swinging by drive-thru’s on the way home: I commit to take a different route – one that doesn’t include a fast food option. All it takes is driving one street over.
- Always trying to be a perfectionist: I leave a small part of a project undone and say, “that’s okay.” I grin over mistakes. I don’t give up on a green smoothie challenge just because I miss one meal or one day.
- Feeling like I’m lost: I force myself to write in my gratitude journal, and I look back through the pages to remind myself of how many times I’ve proven to myself that I DO get through and that I AM worth changing for.
I also remind myself of how much I have and am changing, even when it doesn’t seem that way or isn’t happening at the pace I’d like.
I swore I’d never be a vegetarian. SWORE. No sireeeeee bob. negatory. Not for me. “You can bury me with a drumstick in my hand!” I used to say. It was starting to become prophetic.
When I really looked at my choices, at my patterns, I had to face the facts: what I was doing wasn’t working. Thankfully, I had just enough curiosity in me to try raw foods.
But have I reached equilibrium yet? Ha! Far from it.
There are still frustrations and challenges. Now that I’ve seen how positive the food changes I’ve made have been for me, I want everyone else to change… but it’s a personal journey. Only you can decide what’s best and what you want for yourself. But it’s tough when you want to change the people you love.
Despite noticing more and more negative changes in their health, my parents are both firmly attached, kicking and screaming even (heheh… this apple didn’t fall far from the trees), to maintaining their Standard American Diet. And that’s fine. They can choose not to change and blame it on their age and inability to change “after all these years” or look at my beloved green smoothies as “not normal” . I absolutely respect their choices, and I know how it feels to cling to what you know.
I just hope that through my own example, and the example of the Marvelous Millies out there, that more folks like my parents can see that there’s more to food and living than what they’ve tried so far.
As for myself, I’m looking forward to a bigger personal challenge by participating in the 21-day green smoothie detox in July. The last time I did a detox, I made it through a whole week of only green smoothies! A personal best!
And I hope I’m still after new personal bests when I’m 75 and 1/8th!