People change

Hello! Seiiti Arata. People change. Let’s take a moment to look back on our lives… and see how much we’ve changed.

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People change. Life throughout the decades.

We can begin in decades.

Three decades ago, what was happening in your life? Let me show you how I do this exercise, then you can do it on your end too.

Personally, I used to entertain myself with silly things. It was great to be a child in a world that was a giant playground without any serious consequences.

And two decades ago? Well, I was a teenager with a lot of immature fears and desires. I innocently thought that I was already an adult, and that I had the answer for everything.

A decade ago, I was single, insecure and looking for love. I’d advanced professionally and intellectually, but I was lagging behind emotionally. I was getting drunk a lot and ended up in a lot of embarrassing situations. It was a time of great change.

Well then, this has been my life throughout the decades. Three decades, two decades, one decade.

And for you, how has it been?

If you feel comfortable, you can share it with us using the comments in the YouTube video.

How you’ve changed, different snapshots of your life through the decades?

And in terms of years?

What was happening with you three years ago? People change.

Three years ago, I was working with the United Nations office in Geneva, and was also advancing my studies on human behaviour and coaching.

It was during this time that I realised that our behaviour is influenced by triggers.

I realised that when we want to encourage positive change, it’s not a good idea to focus on undesirable behaviour by criticising it. Instead of this, we want to provide resources to encourage good behaviour. This discovery left me so enthused that I wanted to share it with everyone.

However it seemed that the way that I was sharing it was almost as though I was imposing my correct ideas at the about the incorrect ideas of other people. Today I see that this was really immature, but it was the best I could do at the time.

When we change, our perception of the world also changes

Two years ago, my business, Arata Academy, gained a wider audience, so I decided to leave the United Nations and totally dedicate myself to producing our training. Maybe you have been one of the people who has taken one of our courses and given me this incentive. Thank you. This has changed me in many ways too, because I’ve used a lot of the comments I’ve received to keep on improving. And my biggest lesson up until now came about a year ago.

I realised that, because of my personality and the nature of my work, I had a tendency to listen to other people and to start to feel their pain.

You know when you start to suffer because of problems that don’t relate to you? This was causing me a lot of damage. I always listened with the intention of finding a solution. But sometimes the people that would come and talk to me only wanted to be understood. I didn’t always realise this and instead of listening with empathy, I’d already come up with a strategy, a book recommendation or some sort of coaching technique. And then I would lose the connection.

See, this was also a massive realisation for me, and since then I’ve become more able to relate to others, have empathy, and to respect people as they are.

This has been just an example of how I carry out this exercise. What’s more important is how you’re going to do this activity too.

Know that, when I do this retrospective, I want to see how I’ve changed. People change.

I like to pay attention to how my view of the world changes and how I relate to people in a different way. To see what I was able to improve, or maybe what’s starting to go in a direction that I don’t think is particularly great, and so I want to pay a bit more attention to it. Do you understand? All of this gives us çPeople change. What about you?

I wonder what valuable lessons you can learn from this exercise. How you see yourself in a different way. Take a moment to think how you can use this to shape your future. And next week we will see how it is important to understand our changes so we don’t get labeled.

Make sure that each year is better than the last. Click here to check out the course Better New Year, which is focused on continued improvement.