Saturday Musings - The winds of change

I grew up during the 1950’s and 60’s when life was very different. The amount of change that I have seen in my life so far is astonishing especially when it comes to technology.

My childhood TV

I remember the first TV that we had was in black & white, no colour in those days. It had a small screen surrounded by a wooden case. No wonder it became known as "The Box".

The picture would sometimes go fuzzy or disappear altogether and we would be shown a message saying something like “Normal transmission will resume as soon as possible, do not adjust your set”.

My TV

Now we have slim line digital TV’s with beautifully clear colour pictures and quality sound. What a change.

An old Bakerlite Telephone

My modern Telephone

The telephone is another great example of how things have changed over my life time. I remember the old Bakerlite phones sitting on the hall stand in our house. We had to share a line with some of our neighbours, so you could only make a call when the line was free.

Now we have mobiles, androids and landline phones that we can use anywhere. That is a huge change.

All this technological change is wonderful, but I suspect that we have been so focused on gadgets and technology; we have, as a society, often forgotten that we need to make other changes as well.

For us as human beings to grow, we need to look at changing the ways that we think. We need to let go of the old outdated ways of thinking.

We need to change attitudes like: “my father did it this way, my grandfather did it this way and my great grandfather did it this way too, so I will continue to do it the way they did. It was good enough for them so it’s good enough for me.”  

Attitudes like this stifle us and can easily stop us from living a prosperous life in this changing world.

Here is another example of a way of thinking that needs to be changed. 

We need to let go of the fear of people who are different from us. This may have been useful when we lived in a tribal situation, but in today’s society hanging onto this fear encourages at best isolation; and at its worst racism, violence and discrimination. In fact we need to let go of fear altogether for our society to survive and evolve.

Change is not always easy. It can be very confronting, make us fearful and resentful. However, it does not have to be like that. It is all about how you think. If you tackle change with courage, enthusiasm, a willingness to learn and perseverance then change is your friend.

So think about what you need to change, and which attitudes you are holding onto that are not serving you. Take a deep breath and just do it. You will be glad that you did.

Hilary Thompson

The Out and About Therapist

Facilitator at Flourishing Relationships Retreats