Maya Angelou | Wiley's Wisdom

Thoughts on Change: Let’s Go Places February 4, 2013

Filed under: Man's Best Friend — Wiley Schmidt @ 9:20 pm
Tags: Business, change, daily prompt, Dimmer, dogs, Environment, happiness, joy, love, Margaret Mead, Maya Angelou, Organizational Change, perspective, pets, postaday, quotes about change, terriers, Toyota

I’m not necessarily a fan of Toyota as a brand of vehicles, but a commercial of theirs caught my attention recently.

“Let’s go places,” the voice says, “Not just the ones you can find on a map, but the ones you can find in your heart. Let’s go beyond everything we know and embrace everything we don’t. And once we reach our destination let’s keep going.”

I’ve heard a lot of different people perspectives on change. My ability to see only portions of the world’s color spectrum does not impact what I have observed. In general, change is a grey area. Words like scary and intimidating face off against words like invigorating and exciting.

When it comes to making major life changes, I haven’t always had as big a say as I would have liked. I wouldn’t have chosen to be separated from my mom when I was still a puppy, for example. But I did what I had to do to make lemonade out of life’s lemons.

“If you don’t like something, change it,” said mover and shaker Maya Angelou. “If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”

Ultimately that is exactly what I’ve done. I embrace change wholeheartedly because experience has taught me change is like a light without a dimmer switch. It’s all or nothing. It’s a state of mind, and (if you let it happen) it will bring some light into your day. Without it, we can get lazy. It gets a lot easier to life in default mode rather than living to our destiny.

So I share these humble thoughts on change with the world, hoping that my perspective can bring some light to somebody who is facing a crossroads. Somebody who needs to decide whether to live life to their destiny rather than their default. Somebody who fears change.

“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world,” cultural anthropologist and writer Margaret Mead said. “For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.”

Good, bad, and ugly, I believe there is something to be said for change.

“Because inspiration doesn’t favor those who sit still,” says the man in the Toyota commercial. “It dances with the daring. It rewards the courageous with ideas that excite, challenge and inspire. Ideas that take you places you never imageined. Ideas big enough and powerful enough to make your heart skip a beat and in some cases maybe two. Let’s go places.”