My professor once told me that sometimes you need one thing to be shaken up in order for all other changes to commence.

At the time, I thought that the statement sounded important. Actually, I knew that the statement sounded important. Although it wasn't until two years later that I truly resonated with the importance of that statement.

In life, we strive for comfort. We want to feel safe and comfortable all the time. When certain aspects of our lives change, oftentimes our initial reaction is adversely related to those changes. We don't want things to change because we knew that we were able to live with the way things were but we are not sure if we will be able to continue living as well with whatever is different. Thus, we are afraid of change because the idea is discomforting.

In reality, life is changing all the time both within us and around us. These more subtle changes are typical and usually go unnoticed.

What my wise professor was referring to was a more major life change. Those big events that seem to come out of nowhere and run right into you. Those moments that you could never have imagined would be possible, perhaps only when writing a fictional story. Those days when you just wake up and muster the courage to carry-on not because you finally feel ready to but because you finally realized you never will "feel" ready to. Those moments when it feels like your reality is being "shaken" to its very core.

The latter part of my professor's comment conveys that we need those events to happen in order for the change to not only commence but for us to learn how resilient we are as we can adapt to change. The cool thing about humans is we are programmed for adaptations even when our minds tell us otherwise. Once that first big change happens in life, and we make it through that, then we have proven to ourselves that we CAN do what we never even dreamed would even be possible.

Moreover, when something gets shaken up in our lives, it usually invites an opportunity for us to complete some deep reflection and better understand ourselves. Having a deepened sense of self, personal priorities, and individual value is incredibly empowering. This can also help us to move forward with other changes that may commence in the future because we have the previous experience of adapting to the unexpected.

Letting go of the rigidity of fearing change helps us to evolve with the ebb and flow of life. And sometimes, it really is helpful to have that one thing shaken up so that we become open to new opportunities as they occur. Even when it was not expected and even more so when we would never choose to go through it again.