Marilyn Ferguson 1 - Change is a do-it-yourself proposition
No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional appeal.
– Marilyn Ferguson
Ken Winston Caine adds:
None of us really changes until we are ready to. I’m talking about deep and significant change. Not the superficial change we make when someone beats on us and beats on us and beats on us insisting we must change something and so we assent and pretend to change so they will quit beating on us and go away. That’s not change. That’s social survival. Real change is profound and is the result of a profound shift in awareness. Of a discovery. And is a choice we make completely by ourselves, on our own.
Often the changes we make are changes we could not have made the day before, or the year before. We may have considered the change in the past and found that it made absolutely no sense to us. But now, suddenly, all is clear. We understand how it all fits together and may even be puzzled why it is we never saw this before.
The best a coach or counselor or friend or teacher can do is offer a safe, open environment in which exploration is encouraged and new awarenesses are celebrated and all possibilities are open. That is the creative environment that allows for deep understandings to emerge, for brilliant flashes of awareness to transpire, for profound change to happen.
