Can you imagine the conversation that might take place between a butterfly and a caterpillar, that is about to build its chrysalis? It might sound like that quote. How would you explain this overwhelming need to your non-caterpillar friends? That you have to get so totally wrapped up in your need to change and transform?
The birds are not going to understand. The bees are not going to get it. None of the other kinds of insects and animals go through this type of change. But you know that you just have to do it. There really is no other way to answer your soul’s calling. You have to completely transform.
You are not a climber of leaves and branches any longer. You have this overwhelming desire to fly. To soar. You can’t put a name to this yet, because you haven’t experienced it. But you can feel this constant calling to shift and change. You don’t understand it, yet at a deeper level, you know that this is why you were born and you have to go for it.
Nothing happens until the pain of remaining the same outweighs the pain of change.
~Arthur Burt
I believe that the change doesn’t have to feel painful. I think that the emotion that we feel is fear. But if you really analyze this feeling that we get, isn’t it an awful lot like when you are riding in a roller coaster? You are nearing the top of the climb and about to go speeding down the other side, isn’t it that feeling?
What if this feeling, this fear, is really anticipation? I know that I love this feeling of riding a roller coaster. The screaming, laughter, and excitement. Not everyone does. But a lot of us do.
What if this is the feeling of fear of change, and we change our definition from fear to anticipation? If we can change the meaning of this kind of feeling then, when we enter the chrysalis, we are anticipating the feeling of spreading our wings. We are anticipating the feeling of the wind beneath our wings.
If we are anticipating these feelings, then transformation is exciting. It is something to be desired. We enter into a wonderful relationship with it.
Good points here. Personally, I see people change when there is a sense of urgency for them to change. Pain is one aspect. A promotion or increase in salary can be another. It’s that sense of urgency.
So if we paint a visual picture of how someone can change, give them the path, then light a fire under them, that person will change.
But, it’s not just important for a person to change. It’s also important that this person stays “changed”. For that, we need to augment the environment and people around the person so the person stays “changed”.
Agreed. That is why I love the caterpillar to butterfly transformation analogy. That change is permeant. There is no going backwards. The butterfly’s environment changes because nothing that used to work – the food sources, the lifestyle, etc… – it all doesn’t work for the butterfly.