At the end of my last blog post, and in an effort to maintain momentum with my writing, I added “In my next blog post, we’ll visit the idea of creating more powerful end results that evoke emotion.” And then some interesting things happened. Despite having ‘set the tension’ for writing this post, I actually avoided writing altogether because I was uninspired by the topic. And so this post is going to be about changing your mind as you go.

            Often we think it’s not okay to change our mind. I know because I have done it often and upset people. I once decided not to attend a wedding I had said I would attend. At the time I didn’t think it was a big deal but my friend, the groom, certainly didn’t share that view! More recently, I found myself on an airplane, feeling tired, frustrated, sick with a cold, and finding no place to put my carry-on luggage. So I changed my mind and walked off the plane. Again, I didn’t think it was a big deal. But then it didn’t occur to me that they’d have to hold the plane while my stored luggage was removed! Duh!

            For me, these albeit infrequent incidents of my own horribly aberrant behaviour have reinforced the idea that “it’s not okay to change my mind.” Unfortunately, while not changing my mind would have been the considerate and kind thing to do in the instances mentioned above, it doesn’t make much sense if one also can’t simply change one’s mind about relatively minor issues like the topic of a blog post, or the time of a dinner date.

            By and large I like to be a man of my word. If I say I’ll be at a certain place at a certain time, I tend to get there early. I actually factor in unforeseen delays, like traffic tie ups. But when our commitments keep us from doing what we really want to do, perhaps these commitments need to be revisited. If I say my next blog post is going to be about a certain topic, and the thought of that leaves me uninspired and I don’t write anything for a week, a rethink is in order.

            So where might you have made a commitment to do something, but that commitment actually no longer works for you in the larger scheme of things? Are there any commitments that are actually hindering you, rather than helping?

            In my next blog post, chances are I’ll be writing about the power of lists. That is my intention. It is subject to change without notice. I also notice I don’t even like writing that it is subject to change without notice.