A look back at your yearbook photo and the quote beneath it will unveil just how much you’ve changed since then. You’ll feel a cringeful nostalgia for the time you naively navigated this world. That teen always had their earbuds in, and always seemed to be upset at the injustices committed by those around them. Everything was novel, every first time felt good and every first trial brought with it panicked pain.

You’ve grown since then. Constantly developing new habits and traits, the person you are today has undergone a series of recurring changes. Some of the changes you experienced to your body and mind were predicated on feeling pain. Those growth pains you experienced on your way to change are what guide your thoughts and actions to this day.

You likely wouldn’t respect someone from your past reintroducing themselves only to treat you the way they treated a version of you they last saw. They’d ignore the changes you’ve undergone, and they’d laugh in the face of the pain you experienced in an effort to undergo those changes.

On a similar note, those in your life today will experience you undergoing constant change too. The changes you attempt to make today in hopes of a better tomorrow will need to be interpreted by those around you. You’d likely want to distance yourself from someone who pokes fun at your attempts to better yourself, or who doesn’t consider your attempts to change with seriousness.

This article is about how you should interpret the changes those around you attempt to undergo.

The perspective this article is written from is one which places your personal interests first in the matter at hand.

Relationships Grow Stronger As the People in Them Undergo Change

Your open mindedness in the face of a friend’s or family member’s attempts to change will introduce greater depth to your relationships with them.

The time of change is a sensitive and volatile one. The desire to change always relies on the admittance of being unsatisfied with the current state.

Your friend may want to lose weight and subscribe to a “keto” diet, for example. That desire to change will involve their admittance to not being satisfied with their current weight. In trusting you with knowing about their attempts to change, they trust you with sensitive information about a possible insecurity they have.

The message you send by being respectful, positive, and encouraging in the matter is one of being a reliable and trusting backbone. You’ll paint yourself as someone who understands the sensitivity of the situation, even if the discussed changes may not seem to be a big deal on the surface.

In showing those around you that they can trust you with the things they want to change about themselves, you’ll open doors to a more honest relationship.

They’ll likely want to reciprocate your supportive deed, and they’ll be easy to trust with your own attempts to change things about yourself.

Being supportive of people’s attempts to change / improve is thereby a reliable tool you can use to develop your relationship with them. By being a person others can come to with their insecurities, you’ll establish yourself as a comforting emotional base for them to check in with.

Doing so seems to accelerate the development of quality relationships at a speedier rate.

The ways to be a catalyst for someone else’s growth are countless. In the professional world for instance, you can consistently keep an eye on ways you can help people study for new certifications and provide tools for them to make their job easier.

In your personal life, things like being willing to go for a jog with someone who wants to make it a habit will do wonders to the quality of your relationship.

Those Who Don’t Support the Shedding of Our Old Identities Will Be Shed Along With Them

A surefire way to keep your relationships short and unfulfilled is to become a barrier to others’ attempts to change for the better. Your own insecurities may drag you into not considering others’ attempts to change with seriousness.

You’ll be tempted to poke fun, crack jokes, and perceive those who undergo change to be fickle in their adoption of a certain identity.

Their movement upwards will highlight your sedentary lack of desire to improve yourself in relation to them. Though we often deny the presence of competitive desires in the face of others attempting to change themselves, it is critical to be honest with ourselves in this regard.

If you select to venture down the path of holding someone back from being successful in their attempts to change, you’ll be changed out of their lives too.

Others’ changes thereby, force us to change along with them if we value the relationship in question. The changes you undergo in support of those who attempt to change may be trivial, but there will always be something for you to change.

You may need to change how you perceive those who start taking dance classes for instance, or those who get married at a young age. The changes you undergo will often be changes in how open minded and accepting you are of others’ attempts to change and the new habits they adopt.

You’ll find yourself needing to challenge who you identify as in an effort to be accepting and encouraging of others’ changes which may go against what you believe to be good.

Remember though, in an effort to develop, maintain, and nourish the relationships you have with those around you, your support in times of change is mandatory.

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