Isn’t It Funny How Day By Day Nothing Changes, But…

Time to look at another of my quote images for this article, and you might have to look closely…

“Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when we look back everything is different.”

A great quote *not* by C.S. Lewis.

Hang on, *not* by C.S. Lewis? Indeed, when I researched the quote, I found it to be one of the huge list of wrongly attributed quotes. So, I do try and put the corrections out into the world.

It’s not from ‘Prince Caspian’ from Lewis’s ‘Narnian Chronicles’, as many people attribute it, but does that make the quote meaningless? Oh no, far from it!

I took that photo on a sunset snapping trip to a place called Durdle Door, down in Dorset. The angles of the sunset and the crowds of people there made it a bit difficult to get *quite* what I wanted, and when I did see this nice shot, that photographer had planted himself there for the whole evening, so I decided to make use of the silhouette of a photographer to see if that added anything to the image.

Obviously those cliff faces are changed over the years, but slowly, oh so slowly – you’d never notice the difference on a daily basis, but as the sea crashes against them on that daily basis, those days turn into weeks, into months, into years, into decades. Even then, the difference might not be too easy to spot, but if we could gaze back far enough, we’d surely see that things were different.

The same can be applied to our lives.

If we imagine ourselves sitting there with a camera looking years back at ourselves, we’d see the differences. Differences in health, career maybe, how about lifestyle, wealth or relationships? Some of the differences might be small, some of them might be startling in size, but we’ll see them.

Some of them we won’t have been able to do anything about, but some of them we most certainly *were* able to do something about, and it’s here that we get to the crux of the point I make.

When we look back, we can see the results of our decisions, of our choices. As we sit looking around, we can see those choices in our *current* circumstances, and see the changes that have happened to us along life’s path.

A lot of people don’t like being confronted with the results of their choices, or the fact that the results were even down to their choices in the first place. That doesn’t make it any less a fact.

It’s a key fact too, because if we can imagine ourselves looking back of the landscape of our life, and the differences between then and now, we can just as well look forward too…

Change will come to us, whether we like it or not. Our future self will be able to look back at our current self, and see the difference. Clearly the physical ageing is an obvious example of how day to day changes might not be noticeable, but we’ll surely see them when we look back.

What about those other areas though? The rest of our health, career, relationships, lifestyle?

Do we want to look back and see the differences as a result of inaction, or of the choice to not make intentional decision? If we do that, if we go for the ‘what will be will be’ mantra, then we can’t be surprised if ‘what will be’, well, WAS!

Another way is to decide in the NOW, that we’ll make choices based on intention, set on a foundation of what we really want, the genuine authentic version of ourself.

Then we will act in a way that aligns our decision making with those intentions. This is massively powerful, because it creates the way for us to be able to look back and see the differences with a nod of the head.

Now, it’s important to point out here, that setting out with intention does not always mean we’ll get the results we want. Things will go wrong. Life will throw curve balls at us. The actions of others will impact. The thing is, those things will happen regardless, and if we can’t control the whole universe (which we can’t!), we simply have to accept that as part of life.

However, taking the kinks in the road on board, it surely must be better to be able to look back without the nagging ‘what if’ feelings that come to so many, and will surely come to us if we don’t do anything about it now!

So, check out your surroundings. As you cast your gaze back and spot the differences that you might not have seen on a day to day basis, cast your gaze forward, and decide how intentional you want to be about the changes you set in place.

If you want to change your health, your career, your relationships, your lifestyle, it might take time. It might only be small actions you can take on a daily basis. It might only *need* small actions. True, it might need big actions as well, but just as the crashing waves impact the cliffs the same as the daily waves, it’s the consistent daily action that builds up over time to make that difference we’ll see when we look back.

Sitting on the sofa watching TV might not seem to make a difference day by day, but built up over years, compared to someone who went training for 3 hours a day, or went out gigging in band 5 days a week, as just 2 examples, then that time spent sitting watching TV will be seen as the influence it is, when we look back and see the difference.

Developing skills, developing knowledge, developing ourselves, that doesn’t happen by magic.

Consistent action for a month or two isn’t going to cut it either. The waves don’t stop against the cliffs after a couple of months. This is where the intention comes in, because if we are to take on the work and effort of the long term action, it *has* to come from the real us that we know. Faking it will not last. The intention has to be genuine.

“Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when we look back, everything is different.”

Don’t leave it until then. Start now.
Try it, it can change your life. It can transform it.

Ok, do let me know what you think – I love the feedback!

‘Til Next Time,
Health & happiness,
Gordon
P.S. If you’d like to do something about your intentions, then watch my free video series covering my 8 step goal achievement formula – it works!