Life’s a journey…Surrender
The past few months have made it very clear to me that
life is indeed a journey and once you reach a milestone in your life, it's
immediately time to look ahead to the next. My biggest mistake after
making it through the life-altering adventure I had last year was treating it
as a plateau as opposed to a growth spurt. I conquered quite a bit of
fear and doubt during the Global Partners experience only to find that festering
beneath the tip I melted away was an iceberg of fear waiting to sabotage my efforts to
begin building a new life for myself. I
guess you can’t cure 20 years of conditioning that easily, but if it was easy
then everyone would be willing to confront their flaws and attempt to correct
them. I have been able to identify one
thing that has been a major contributor to this hard fought transition and that is
reluctance. My reluctance to let go has
been a major obstacle to becoming a brand new me because I can’t seem to part
with the baggage of my former self. This
brings me to the crux of this post which is the necessity of burying the past.
R.I.P.
I have become quite a fan of the OWN network recently,
especially any program featuring Iyanla Vanzant. I recently learned that Iyanla was born Ronda
Harris. She changed her name in her late
20’s, as she put it, because she no longer had a need for Ronda due to her
transformation into a new person. Iyanla
realized that she was carrying the burdens, pain, scars and habits of Ronda
into her new life of success. Regardless
of how great a situation may look, if you bring old habits and an antiquated mentality
into a new environment nothing really changes.
You will do in present as well as future circumstances what you have
done in the past unless you shed certain aspects your former self that simply don’t
fit into the life you want to live.
Iyanla said that she essentially buried Ronda Harris, not out of anger
or spite, but out of necessity. She was
living a life that she was no longer meant to live and the only way to breakout
of the cycle was to let go of Ronda and embrace Iyanla.
Derek 4.0
While I’m not going as far as to change my name, I
have realized that this is what I need to do.
In retrospect, I see that this transformation has been an iterative process for me and now it’s time for the next phase. The way I see it, I have had three pivotal
transitions in life and heading into a fourth. Those transitions are:
Graduating from high school
Going back to school to finish my undergraduate degree
Graduating with an MBA and seeing more of the world than I ever expected
DEREK 4.0!!!!!!!!!
