Meaningful Change

By Gayle Gregory

Mental Health America’s (MHA) Live Your Life Well is filled with relevant tidbits to help us live well in these uncommon times. Each of ten tools is precise and capable of breaking through old, inadequate patterns to help us ride life’s rollercoaster with greater ease. Together they can create meaningful change – lasting and positive – for our lives.

Over the past 12 years I have come to understand what it is that works for and against us when it comes to change. Thanks to curiosity, not to mention a big helping of life’s hard knocks, I’ve accepted the notion that we are each our own problem and solution. At times it would have been easier to close my eyes and revert to less informed thinking, but once aware, there was no way to be unaware.

The concept of personal responsibility is well known but mostly unclaimed by the general population, and yet, it is the crux beneath meaningful change. In order to shift our reality, we must shift our belief system. In order to do that, we have to acknowledge responsibility for our reality. That means there are no more victims, there is no more blame, and projecting our pain onto others, also must stop. That’s a tall order. It means rewiring our automatic responses of self-protection and self focus and remembering something bigger, that we are hard-wired for community and are designed to be here, for and with each other.

MHA’s tool number one says, “Connect with others.” This tool alone can shift the balance towards real change. It is critical. It moves us beyond self-definition and begins to broaden our concept of inclusivity. It begins the transfer from ‘me’ to the ‘me we were meant to be’. It is a starting point to reclaiming our physical, emotional, spiritual and mental health. Meaningful change is the result of small steps. Every time we use one of the tools it begins a ripple in the pond of change. It may not seem like much at first, but that one small step creates a small tsunami that affects our entire well-being.