When we decide we want to change or we feel we need to change, we often work at it.  We try really hard to change.  We come up with strategies; we seek advice; we read self-help books; we go to courses, thinking we'll find a technique, or a means to fix ourselves.  Too often, that leads to hopelessness and discouragement.  Too often we monitor ourselves and force ourselves and get ourselves so stressed and anxious that we give up.  Trying hard, despite good intentions, rarely works for long.  True change does not come from more intensity and greater effort from the same level of thinking; it arises from wisdom that guides us in a new direction from the quietude of our own minds.  We can't think our way into a different experience of life, but when we look to quiet our thinking and "allow" fresh thought to occur to us, we find inspiration and clarity and a new direction easily, and change is natural and effortless.  Sometimes we hardly realize it until someone else notices that we are different.

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