We’ve spent the past several weeks talking about what it means to BEGIN. AGAIN. We talked about making room, returning to ourselves, what happens when life changes without asking us first, and, most recently, about moving forward even when we have no idea what comes next.
But beginning was never meant to be where we stayed.
At some point, the conversation has to move with us, because once we give ourselves permission to begin again, something else starts to happen. We notice what feels different. We pay attention to what still fits and what doesn’t. We start to recognize the places where we’ve changed, sometimes before we have any idea what we’re supposed to do with that information.
Maybe, just maybe, that’s where evolution begins.
There are those times when we absolutely know something needs to change because life makes it impossible not to. Something ends. Something happens. The way we were doing things no longer works, and whether we were ready for it or not, we have to figure out what comes next.
But what about when nothing is really wrong?
What about when the life you built still fits…mostly. The routine works. The choices you made still make sense. You can look around and find plenty to be grateful for, and yet somewhere underneath it all, a thought keeps coming back, that little voice in the back of your mind keeps whispering…
“I want something different.”
One of our teachers, Loren, put it this way: “To me, it’s the courage to say I want something different, choosing it and just going for it with disco balls on.”
I love that. Partly because of the disco balls, obviously. But mostly because underneath the playfulness is something we don’t talk about enough. Sometimes the hardest part of changing something isn’t figuring out what to do next. It’s giving ourselves permission to admit that what we have now may no longer be what we want.
We tend to believe change needs a reason we can defend. We wait until something is uncomfortable enough, broken enough, or clearly finished before we give ourselves permission to imagine something else. A job we can no longer tolerate. A relationship that has clearly run its course. A routine that has stopped working. Something concrete enough that if someone asks why we’re changing it, we have an answer that makes sense.
But sometimes there isn’t one.
Sometimes the thing we’re questioning was exactly right for us once. Maybe we worked hard to get there. Maybe we chose it intentionally. Maybe we loved it. That can make it even harder to acknowledge the shift when we feel it, because changing our minds can feel like we’re saying the choice we made before was wrong.
It wasn’t.
Something can have been right for you then and not be right for you now.
Sara described evolving as “continuing to grow and become who you are meant to be, regardless of what life has thrown at you.”
I keep coming back to the word continuing. There isn’t a point where we arrive and, like magic, become the finished version of ourselves. We keep changing. Our bodies change. Our relationships change. What matters to us changes. The way we want to spend our days changes. Things that once felt exciting become less important, while something we never imagined wanting starts quietly asking for our attention.
That doesn’t mean we’re ungrateful for what came before. It just means we’re still becoming.
We see this on the mat all the time. There are practices we need during certain seasons of our lives that may not be what we need forever. There are poses we chase until one day we realize we don’t really care whether we ever do them. There are days when we want to move and sweat and find an edge, and others when what we need is to stop pushing altogether.
The practice changes because we do.
Maybe evolution works the same way.
We tend to imagine evolving as becoming more. Stronger. Better. Braver. More accomplished. Some shiny new version of ourselves that proves all this growing has been worthwhile. But evolution can also look like letting something become less important. Changing your mind. Wanting a quieter life. Taking something off the calendar instead of adding something to it. Returning to something you thought you had outgrown. Trying something you are terrible at simply because it makes you happy.
It might even mean admitting that the version of success you once wanted doesn’t interest you anymore.
Allison talked about evolving as “being open to the changes that can show up for you on and off your mat and embracing what’s next.”
Maybe that’s where the loudly part begins.
Not with some big grand announcement or dramatic reinvention. Sometimes evolving loudly is incredibly quiet. It is hearing yourself think, I do want something different and not immediately talking yourself out of it. It is allowing that thought to exist before you know what you’re going to do about it.
Because wanting something different doesn’t mean you have to blow up your life tomorrow. It doesn’t require a five year plan, a resignation letter, or a moving truck. You can get curious first. You can pay attention. You can try something. You can leave a little room for the possibility that the life you are growing toward might look different from the one you once imagined.
Not every change has to begin because something went wrong.
Sometimes we change simply because we have.
So here’s something to notice this week.
What if nothing has to be terribly wrong before you’re allowed to want something different?