Resurrection

4th April 2021

River looked at the chrysalis hanging on the leaf. He was puzzled and curious. Only yesterday, he saw a green caterpillar at the same spot. It had been there for a couple of days, moving from time to time and now it had turned into this intriguing structure. It almost looked part alien, both novel and exquisite. A strange mysterious power seemed to emit from it, a life force. One day, he watched with amazement as the chrysalis had begun to split and slowly emerged a wrinkled creature with long legs and folded wings that the caterpillar did not have before. It slowly stretched its wings and let them dry and expand supported by the light and heat of the sun. And it flew away, with River barking at it, completely mystified.

Have you seen a caterpillar changed into a butterfly? The caterpillar is no more and a butterfly is born. No longer crawling from leaf to leaf, this creature now flies from blossom to blossom.

How have you changed over the years? How have you changed in the past year? What about the last five years or even the past 10 years? Can you remember how you were like when you were a child or a teenager? Can you see the similarities? Can you recall the differences? What were you doing then? What were your goals then? Have you achieved your goals since then? If you have, what happened after that? If you haven’t, can you remember why? Have you continued striving for them or have you decided on other goals instead?

With change as the constant (like death and taxes), there is no standing still. Even if you stayed the same, your environment will change around you and you will invariably be changed. You may have embraced the change so much that you can hardly recognize yourself from the person before. Have you lost yourself? More importantly, do you prefer the present you or do you feel you have lost your footing in your own world?

Our external life reflects our internal life. What you see outside in your world truly shows what you see inside. Everything in your life, what has been achieved or not, the friends you have, the choices you make are all in exact accordance with how you see yourself. You will never act out of alignment with the person you see yourself as, your self-identity. If you have achieved much, it was you who did it. If you have not achieved your goals, it was also you who did that.

To be able to obtain a different result, the only thing that needed to change is you. That is the beauty and gift (Some may see it as a curse!). There is nothing or nobody else you need to change apart from yourself. The person you seek to change is found in the mirror. The universe is exactly how it should be. The only variable that you can change to affect your results is you. Many people change rapidly at the beginning (consider your change between age 10 to 20 and from 20 to 30) and slow down after. Many make the mistake of accepting who they are and thinking that is them. They are the people who ‘know themselves’ very well and cannot see past what they know. They usually have strong opinions about many things. In doing so, they may think that they have achieved their potential regardless of whether they had gotten the results they seek or not.

It is not about changing who you are entirely. You are born unique and perfect. You have to be you as everyone else is taken. The question lies in empowerment. Are you empowering yourself? Are ALL aspects of you giving you the power to be who you want to be? In life, there are beautiful parts that should be accepted, embraced, and treasured as there are parts that should be questioned, rejected and discarded. Many people fail to become the person they want to be because they are attached to the person they were. You have to empty your hands before you can hold something else. Keep the bits of you that make you beautiful and empowers you to your own personal greatness. Question the bits that hold you back from winning in your personal journey of life.

When you achieved your goals, it is not so much the goals you achieve that is the reward than the person you had become to achieve those goals. That is the true gift. Take business, for example, to start a business, it takes a certain mindset. It takes certain traits and personality to do what is needed to open the doors for the first time, shout to the world what you are offering to the marketplace and start providing value. To proceed from the survival stage to a more stable and secure position, a different set of skills are required for putting systems in place and daily management. The business person had to change to obtain different results for the business.

Another example would be sports, like competitive swimming. When you have won the national competition and now training for the Olympics, the way you train, the way you think will have to change as the present you had gotten you this far, so to get further you have to get further internally. Keep the parts in you that have gotten to where you are now and let go of the parts that are holding you back. Preserve your core and stimulate your progress.

Sometimes, we use too much energy to hold on to what we were so as not to lose ourselves and miss the point that we could be much more and by letting go, we are actually becoming more and expanding instead. Remember that we do not hold on tightly to our thoughts and beliefs as much as our thoughts and beliefs tightly hold on to us.

We do not end when we let go of certain parts of us, we simply become more. We have the power to allow the disempowering parts of us to die, allowing our better version to be resurrected.

The caterpillar had to go before the butterfly could come. What do you need to let go of?

‘The old you had to die so the better you could be reborn.’

Back to Blog