Dear Reader,
This month, I invite you to pause and reflect on Change.
In my work as a counsellor with couples, the theme of change is often at the centre of our conversations. One partner hopes for something different, the other resists, and many find themselves repeating the same patterns for years. The desire for change is present, yet the movement towards it can feel incredibly difficult.
I would like to share some reflections from my mentor, Michael Meade, and encourage you to sit with your partner and consider what these words might mean for your own relationship and life journey.
“When it comes to change, the point is not self-improvement or simply a change in status. Changing one’s fate means awakening to another way of seeing and being. Not simply doing things differently, but becoming a different person, both more aware within and more alert to the mystery of life. The point of change is to become as another, to become the other that was hidden inside all along.
For such a thorough change to happen, people must let go of who they think they are. Letting go of one’s habitual self turns out to be one of the greatest difficulties in life. If that were not so, many more people would escape the common traps that keep life small and self-confining.”
Meade illustrates this idea through a story once observed by sages in ancient India.
Hunters discovered a simple way to trap monkeys. They hollowed out a coconut, cut a hole just large enough for a monkey’s paw, fixed the coconut to the ground, and placed fruit inside. The monkey would reach in and grasp the food, but once its hand was closed into a fist, it could not pull it back out. Freedom was possible at any moment. All the monkey had to do was release what it was holding. Yet most would not let go.
The trap was not the coconut.
The trap was the refusal to release.
How often do we do the same?
We may cling to old roles, familiar conflicts, outdated expectations, or even long-held resentments. Sometimes we hold onto ways of being that no longer nourish us simply because they are known. It can feel safer to remain in a familiar discomfort than to risk the uncertainty of true transformation.
“Any meaningful change must begin with recognising and letting go of what entraps us… Often it seems better to cling to a familiar pain than suffer a genuine change of state.”
In Gestalt work, we speak of awareness as the first movement toward transformation. Change does not happen through pressure, blame, or forcing the other to be different. It begins when we notice what we are holding, and gently allow ourselves the courage to loosen our grip.
So this month, perhaps the question is not
“How do I make things change?”
but rather
“What am I holding onto that I might be ready to release?”
We always have a choice.
To remain caught in the habitual mind, or to surrender, let go, and allow something new to emerge.
