Clock reads: Time for Change

Time to Change

9/24/2014

Dear Jennifer,

Next week your life will change. Whether it changes in the direction you want isn’t up to you, but how you author your own story after the change is. Perhaps you will collapse in despair at the news, perhaps you will sigh in relief. What matters is not that moment, but every moment after.

Will you stand up and fight for your dreams? Either answer could imperil your goals. They could be subsumed by others’ needs, or they could waste away as trifles. You must not allow either to happen. Whether you meet your verdict with tears of joy or of pain, you must wipe your eyes and embrace the future.

Dear Jennifer, today your life will change. Either you will take steps toward your goals, or you will bury yourself in the sand of distraction. Does that article really help you today? Or are you reading it to keep your stomach still? Click it away, stand up, and take a step—one step—to improving your life and bringing your goals closer to you. Now is not the time to avoid your to-do list. Embrace it. Mark items off of it with a flourish. Write new items with the breathlessness of nascent adventure.

Will you walk toward what you want? Will you mark your progress? Or is every click of the mouse your anthem of defeat? Procrastination has its own allure—how can you be a miracle worker if you tell someone how long it will actually take? But you know the crippling despair of failure, of blaming yourself for not trying harder and earlier. Of not getting it done.

And the cost. Oh, Jennifer, the cost of procrastinating your goals is the cost of your own soul. And you know it. You can feel it withering and dying with every raised eyebrow or verbal doubt. Friends and family “look out for you,” and murder you in the process, one caution after the other. To wait, to acquiesce to their fears, would end you. Again.

So today, tomorrow, next week, your life will change.  Some of those changes will be wrought with your hands, some, a stranger’s. But there will be change.  How will you address it? I hope you dive in, Jennifer. I hope you grab the rope swing of positivity and jump. I hope you turn a blind eye to self-doubt, to procrastination, to the fear that robs you of your dreams. Words will change you. Actions will change you. And with every delicious moment of both victory and defeat, I hope you change your life. Every day. Every hour, I hope you write your life story with tears of joy.

Next week your life will change, dear Jennifer. You will change it.

To read more letters, click on The Path!