Are you changing or transforming?

While I was walking through my room this morning (doing God only knows what because I have already forgotten) I heard something on the TV that caught my attention, but only for a moment. The only things I remember are the two words “life-changes” and “transformation”. It got me to thinking about the two and what they really mean.

I decided to look up the difference between change and transformation and found a couple of really great articles. Most of the articles I found had to do with change vs. transformation in business or leadership but a couple hit home on a personal level which gave me much food for thought.

One article, The difference between change vs. transformation is simple, yet profound, references an excerpt from a graduation speech given by Lynn Twist at Bainbridge Graduate Institute. I absolutely LOVE what she says!

Change can change back. (We can go from conservative to liberal, from disciplined to undisciplined…) Change is volatile. Transformation is completely different – though sometimes it is called change. Transformation never makes the past wrong. It transforms it. It doesn’t deny it. It honors it in a way that you can move forward without making anything wrong, and having the past somehow now become complete, rather than wrong. Transformation has a permanence to it – where once you transform, once you awaken, once you see the stations you didn’t see before, you can’t go back. Transformation has the ultimate power of time, and what the world is crying for now is transformation, not necessarily more change, though some change may be a part of it, the route to transformation. Transformation suddenly makes the past make sense, and new futures open up. ~ Lynn Twist

Another article in The Primes talks more on a business level but there a couple of excerpts that can be applied personally and really make sense.

CHANGE requires becoming familiar with the current situation, and working to make things better, faster, cheaper, or some other “er” word. The past is the fundamental reference point and actions are intended to alter what already happened. The success of a CHANGE initiative is judged by efficiencies and economies that are realized at the end of our effort, compared with when you started. When you choose CHANGE, your future is really a reconditioned or improved version of the past.

TRANSFORMATION is an assertion that our actions today create our future tomorrow. The future can be described and realized when you free yourself from constraints of the past. In transformation, you design your future and invent ways to bring it about. Transformation doesn’t describe the future by referencing the past (better, faster, or cheaper); it births a future that is entirely new.

In my experience, transformation does not happen overnight. It takes change and lots of it! We can’t have transformation without having various changes along the way first. Reading these articles helped me to understand that all the changes I have been through helped to transform me into who I am today. I am not a changed woman, I am a transformed woman!

I do not dwell on the failures and struggles of my past; I used them as learning opportunities for my future. I understand why my life was the way it was and how the changes in my belief system have transformed my outlook on life today.  This transformation helps to keep me from making the same bad choices I have in the past and guides me to view my future in a different light.  Because I have transformed, I cannot go back to the way I was or the life I lived. That thought truly feels good because it means I love and respect myself today!