Change is evidence that we’ve learned something. As we grow throughout our lives we change as people because experience has shown us that something needs to be different. Ideally, that is. We could keep doing the same things with the same attitudes but our species would have died out long before either you or I have had our opportunity to make mistakes.

There, I said it: mistakes. That is the most common basis for change. We screwed something up so now we have to fix it and try not to do it again.

I work with people who have made mistakes. Some of those people have made a lot of mistakes. Some continue to make the same mistakes. They’re just mistakes. Through them lies the possibility of insight. That’s the point where things become difficult. Who really wants to take a severe look in the mirror and admit that they’ve done something stupid . . . again? Change is hard, not changing is even more so. Refusal to evolve within your life means you’re going to hit a lot of potholes on your journey.

Life is not a perfectly paved road full of flowers and sunshine and unicorns prancing about in the nearby field. For most of us it presents challenges on a regularly occurring basis. That road is bumpy and there’s some slimy thing crawling across it. To reduce bumps we learn from the ones we’ve hit and look ahead to see the ones coming to best reduce their impact or eliminate them altogether. To refuse change is to ensure a terrible ride that will give you aches and pains and you’ll end up stepping on the slimy thing.

My job has given me the privilege of observing change in people. I’d like to think I’ve helped but when it comes down to the real work of change, it’s entirely up to the individual. It’s a tough undertaking. The end result when a person has comes to a realization about their life, is like catching an early spring rainbow or a blooming flower – it’s absolutely breath-taking.

There are always people who will end up with slime on their shoes. The refusal to invoke change is not a condemnation on the lives of those who behave like that. It simply means that the time is not now. Change comes to us all. It cannot be avoided. We either embrace it or change shoes often.

_Keri lives in Boyle Street and tries to avoid stepping in anything slimy. _