Adapting to Change
ALERT!!!! If you’re reading this at what you think is 7:00 am, then you under-slept! It’s only 6 am here in the Central Time Zone. You missed the “FALL BACK” time change. Thank Ben Franklin for his grand idea. Change came, both in our daylight savings time and change is happening in the trees with their leaves becoming all variations of beautiful color. I witnessed it firsthand yesterday when I traveled home from Tulsa to Frisco. What a beautiful sight! We’re even having cooler weather.
CHANGE is coming. It will get even cooler.
This is my favorite time change – the one that “falls back” and for those of us who remembered, we get a much needed extra hour of sleep. We adults can get this and adapt quite readily. But, oh my goodness, I remember when my children and grandchildren were babies and those time changes came and it was a work-out to get them on the new schedule. But, these days, wise young moms have learned to trick the time clock. They start regulating their children’s schedule way before last night. They gradually moved bedtime and morning wake up time and nap times later by 10-15 minutes. By the time this Sunday came those little ones’ schedule was already tracking the new time change.
I love that. Adapting to change. Rather than cranky moms, dads and kids….be forward thinking. What can I do to make what I know is coming…..an easier, calmer, less-stressful outcome? First of all, I can ACCEPT that changes are inevitable. Like this Daylight Savings time change – it happened whether we liked it or not. Again, thank good old Benjamin Franklin for that! He proposed rising an hour earlier in order to conserve candles, but it didn’t take root until World War II, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt started what he called “War Time” in an effort to save resources. Thanks, Ben, & President Roosevelt!” And you can thank me for giving you this piece of American History. You’re welcome!
Being willing to embrace change has so many rewards. While I still love my former home city of Tulsa, and the friends and family that live there, because I made the change and moved to Frisco, TX, now I have precious new friends. I’m closer to my family for sweet times that I would have missed if I hadn’t “made the change”.
Change in our lives is inevitable. We can hold change like the tight reins of a horse and resist it and refuse to submit to change, or we can take off those old hats of “I’ve ALWAYS done it this way, and I’ll never change” or put on those new hats of “I’m going to embrace change – and grow and learn and adapt and be ALL God destined me to be.” Maybe it’s time to rethink that potential new hairstyle, that better job, that computer course to up your game, that circle of friends, that same-oh-same-oh attitude of gloom, doom, and despair. Just maybe it’s time to get a new lease on life by being willing to CHANGE!