Growth and Change
January 6th, 2012Happy 2012 and welcome to our new Legacy Center blog! Donna, Kirsten and I will be sharing thoughts from time to time that we hope will be of help in your process of growth and change. In this first blog, I’d like to offer a few thoughts about change.
One of my favorite books is Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled. The book has a great opening line – just three words: “Life is difficult.” The same can be said of change. If change were easy, there’d be no need for gym memberships, or smoking cessation programs, or 12 Step groups. In therapy, the biggest reason why change is difficult is because it involves pain, the pain of facing issues we haven’t been ready or willing to face before. It’s ironic, isn’t it? We have to go through pain in order to move past the pain that brought us into therapy! As one person put it, recovery/therapy/growth is like jumping through a plate glass window into paradise. It often feels worse before it feels better.
As you move into this new year, Donna, Kirsten and I hope you will find enough challenge to keep you growing, and enough genuine growth to keep you encouraged.
Patrick Means, MA, LMHC
Thought for the Day: “We have to face the pain we have been running from. In fact, we need to learn to rest in it and let its searing power transform us.” Charlotte Joko Beck, quoted in Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach, Ph.D.