For me, change occurs when the next thing makes something earlier no longer necessary. But this “necessity” is not just a kind of practical impact externally measurable as convenience or requirement.

The hold we have on things past is half made up of the hold they have on us. Things that we have embraced before have helped us to believe in who we wanted to be for that time. The most sure way to allow a change to happen is to have sight of a “newer” me that I can see I want to be.

New things that make this new version of myself believable by me are far more likely to get my embrace. They need to make something older unnecessary going forward to most likely make my newness most believable, but when that happens it’s almost easy to make the move.

A big big question: am I more likely to be shown a new me by someone else, or to discover it within my own imagination?

I think the answer is, the two things need to happen at the same time… either one alone is usually not enough. Together, they are opportunity. Separately they are, usually, just some kind of awareness.