Monday 1 June 2015

Progress and change-what's the difference?

George Bernard Shaw Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anythingProgress and change are one and the same thing, it's just how we look at them. Here's what I mean, progress is seen to be a good thing, you know you are progressing in your career, in your relationship, training, business, travelling. All the things that are positive, yet change is seen as something to be suspicious off because it could be bad for us, and there are many incidents of this: closing of the mining industry in the U.K, the change in governments from one party to another, same-sex marriage, free child care, de-regulation of the banking industry in the eighties was seen as a turning point in the recovery of the British economy by some, and as the beginning of the financial crisis that in still being felt in many western counties by others.
Change is always happening, if it didn't nothing would be here, not the sun, stars, earth, moon, universe, us, nothing!
Whether you believe in god or not, the first verse of the bible says this"in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth"that is change right there! Yet we are meant to fear change, yet love progress because one is good because it benefits us while the other might be bad for us because it might cost us or cause problems to us.
The mind is a one amazing machine that does so many different things at the same time while making it seem like it's easy, scientists looking for a way to get robots to work like humans have found just how complicated that is.
We teach our children to read, write, speak, walk, play a game and congratulate ourselves on their progress, never seeing it as change never looking at it in any different way than something good, something right.
If the child didn't walk, talk, read, in the set standard manner we start to look for reasons for this, not seeing the progress but the problems that we think are there.
I am thinking of children who grow at different rates, learn new skills at different times from the set norm, not children with learning difficulties, autism, physical handicaps like blindness, deafness.
Until something stops our progress, we just assume that it will be like this, even when you're getting on in your career, planning for the retirement pension, home, saving to allow you to live comfortably after work, so why should you be thinking any thing will change?
But it does, things always change, so why not accept that and think in line with it?
There is a quote that sums it up
"Hope for the best, but plan for the worse"
Some people hear me say this when things are going wrong and think that I am being pessimistic, when the opposite is true.
Being a " positive thinker" means many different things to different people. My take on it is this: having the ability to think clearly, calmly, practical, pragmatically allows you to be able to solve problems by looking at them from different angles, short-term, long-term, is this problem worth solving?
Should I go around it?
Put all my effort into in dealing with this issue?
It may not be what we call progress because it has slowed/stopped that forward momentum we expect to always be going on, but it is change, it is progress not in the forward direction but sideways, backwards even.
You haven't stopped reaching for your goal (whatever it is) you are just adjusting, adapting, being flexible to the situation by thinking differently.

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