Change
George Bernard Shaw once said, “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” That may be true, but it 
doesn’t make the process of change any easier. We get comfortable in our ways of doing things, and changing our ways takes thought, energy, time and persistence! Who needs the aggravation?
I loved Barack Obama’s comment that “change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” So true—and so hard to accept when we’re sure we’re already pedaling as fast as we can. Having just come through three days of future planning and strategic planning meetings, I’m exhilarated about the future. It’s not always easy to accept that others don’t see the future in the same way I do, and it can be even harder to resist defending my position. But you know what? It turned out that the synthesis of all the concepts and ideas was pretty exciting. Not only that, because everyone was involved, everyone is on board!
Some of the plans will be a piece of cake for me, others will require significant effort. The same is no doubt true for all the other participants. But the future we’re building is OURS, and the effort we put out is for our own benefit. I’ll keep that in mind as I stumble through the next few months and, when change comes knocking on your door, I hope you will as well. Remember, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change we seek.”
— Lyn Policha, WJS Canada Policy Analyst