Wherever You Go, There You Are!

I just returned from a trip to England, a country I lived and worked in for over a decade. I slotted right back into the routines- from tea time in the afternoon to hustling to catch trains for travel to teaching assignments, to using certain Britishisms like “I say!” It all still felt very comfortable, although this is the first time I didn’t drive- or even want to- while there. Hmmm- time is passing by.

Seeing old friends, family and haunts was wonderful, as was encountering new people and places. Several times over the trip, and now visiting friends in the US en route back home, the expression “wherever you go, there you are” has surfaced. It caused a few discussions about what it means, and questions of just how do we escape the parts of ourselves we wish to shed and move on to new realities or ways of being in the world. It becomes especially tricky when we are surrounded by others whose ideas of us are now out of date. They remember us as we used to be and are often surprised, disoriented or even grumpy when we show up differently. And we, too, can’t expect things to change just by being in different places if we haven’t done the personal work required to effect that change.

I know from my work in hypnosis, for which I hold accreditation, that part of the strategy for change is to alter the charged emotions we have attached to events or perceptions of events in order to feel and behave differently towards them. There’s also the matter of choice- simply making a choice to be different or do things differently, and then acting in accordance with that new way we want to be. Often we wait until we have a crisis to be jolted or forced into that new reality, but it doesn’t have to be that way. A healthy dose of conscious awareness, self-discipline and a game plan perhaps coupled with coaching or good support will get us well on our way. Then making sure our environments support our new choices- whether it’s what we eat, or how we exercise or how we relate to key people or projects in our lives- will grease the wheels on our journey to success as the ‘new me”, wherever we go!