"Everything can Change"

 Ever look at your life and say, "I can't stand it anymore?  How did I get here?" Pretty sure I'm not alone feeling stuck, stale and  yucky.

I mentioned Alfred Adler last week (A Funny Thing Happened . .  ) and after a weekend surrounded by his ideas, thoughts, quotes and theory I am reenergized and I want to share it with YOU!  Here are some fabulous Adlerian concepts to put the pep back in your step.

1.  We all work from our own private logic.  Meaning we all have different thoughts and ideas about how life is and how life should be.  I know you know this, but do you really KNOW it?  Do you realize your spouse, your kids, your siblings live in a similar reality, but with (sometimes vastly) different interpretations.  We all BEHAVE by this private logic.  Let me boil this down for you, people aren't so much acting like selfish jerks, they are acting in relation to their private logic (which is different then yours, not necessarily wrong). Remember, we are all the hero of our own story line.

2.  We get to know someone else's private logic by listening (not lecturing).  Adler's colleague, Rudolf Dreikurs said, "Their ideas and viewpoints are important, particularly since they act in accordance with them!" 

3. Family of origin, birth order, genetics, experiences influence our lives, but do not determine it.  Adler said, "Everything can be different."  So if our sister was the smart one growing up, well we can still head to graduate school in our 30's.  If our brother was the athletic one, no matter - we can train for a 5k, 10k, heck even a marathon in our 40's.  If our cousin was the artistic one, why we are the only one holding ourselves back from painting or writing or sculpting in our 50's.

4.  Adler was action oriented, “Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.”  We can read and cogitate and plan and stew and think all we want, but life happens by movement.  We gotta get MOVING.  Try something, dip our toe in, get into action.  I LOVE IT!

5.  And lest we get nervous about taking the exact RIGHT action, Adler said, "The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions."  There you go, pin that quote on your bathroom mirror and watch your courage flourish.

6.  "No experience is a cause of success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences, so-called trauma - but we make out of them just what suits our purposes." The sad childhood, the embarrassing adolescence, the rejection from the college we wanted to get into, the heartbreak in our twenties -- these do not cause our suffering today, it's the story we tell around these events, the interpretations we glean, the choices we make.  Adler doesn't deny that sad, embarrassing and traumatic things happen, AND what we do with these events is the key.

7.  We are all familiar with nature and nurture.  We are who we are because of our genetics or because of what happened to us, or a combo of the two.  Adler threw in one more element, The Creative Self.  We take our nature and nurture and mix them in with our interpretations and voila - we get who we are.  This creative self is filled with possibility, can be edited, added to, reinterpreted.  So, to end with the beginning, "Everything can change!"