ADJUSTMENT

“It is possible to intervene to make your life move in a direction that suits your desires and expectations.” - Terry Mante

WISHES are not horses. Many times, we find that our prevailing realities do not line up with our desired outcomes. If your life is not going the way you desire or expect, will you just put your hands on your head and wallow in a pity party? If your spouse is not happy because of a particular shoe, will you complain or change the shoe? If you desire to lose some weight but you find that you keep gaining more pounds, are you just going to be embarrassed or will you alter your regular lifestyle practices so you could achieve your desire?

You see, there is nothing in life that happens which is not made to happen. Things don’t just happen. If you don’t like how your life is moving, you can intervene to make it move in a direction that suits your desires and expectations. You can alter the circumstances of your life. For you to make those alterations, you must understand the concept of adjustment.

According to the Encarta World English Dictionary, adjustment refers to the act of making “a slight change intended to make something fit or function better.” Sometimes, the steps you need to take to make your life better may not be so big but they could be little actions that produce big results. Nevertheless, you have to learn to take those steps.

Adjustment is an imperative. It is extremely important and cannot be ignored. It is perhaps the only sensible and logical way to change undesirable outcomes in your life. If you don’t learn to adjust, you cannot change your life.

As important as adjustment is, it must be deliberately engineered. Adjustment is an alternative course of action that is pursued to make a desire become real. If you throw a pity party after a bad business deal, it will not necessarily lead you out of indebtedness. Merely wishing that the next semester will produce better grades will not change the grades for you. There has to be a carefully crafted strategy that will help you to achieve the outcome you desire.

In making adjustment, you have to be careful not to allow the status quo to get in your way. Don’t permit the usual to bar you. The purpose of adjustment is to produce new results. New results come when you do things you have never done before. Thus if you are adjusting, you are displacing some current practices with new practices. It implies you are creating new experiences; you are doing things you have never done before. Adjustment requires shifting your paradigm.

Adjustment is a tough call. It is not done lightly. It may be contrary to your senses. It may be unreasonable. But you must see the need to amend your ways. The price may be high but the value could be priceless. You have to be able to defy your senses to make the adjustment necessary for you to reach where you want to be. You have to be willing and ready to resign from your comfort zone. Delivering the keynote address, Anthony Cudjoe remarked at DECISION that “Comfort is the enemy of significance.” You can’t have a significant life if you are not ready to swim against the tide.

If you want to see a change in your life, you must be prepared to make changes. You must live as if you are an engineer. You must design, plan and construct your life. At any point in time, if you don’t like something about the condition of your life, make a move. Initiate a new process and effect a change.

© 2011 Terry Mante
PEDNET
Accra, Ghana