I know that the reason why you feel stuck is because every time you try to step forward, something pushes you back. Every time you make progress, another fault is found. Every time you try to move, the world shifts out from beneath you just a bit more.

I know why you feel stuck, and it’s not because you’re a victim. You know you’re not a victim. People who are afraid that they cannot change their lives have a deep, burning hunger to do it, they just don’t know how. It’s not that you don’t think you can, it’s that you just can’t see the way quite yet.

And that’s okay. Because what you can’t see right now is that the only constant in your life is change. There is nothing but change, and growth, and newness. You get a new opportunity every second of every moment of every day. You get another chance every time you greet the sunlight in the morning. It’s just that each day, you keep choosing the same things, and so you keep getting the same results.

Human beings are not static. Our bodies are regulated in cycles and systems, we feel things in waves and bits, we are constantly adapting to what’s around us, even if we don’t realize what’s happening at the time.

If you feel stuck, it’s not because the world is holding you in place, it’s because you’re afraid to let go. It’s because the safer option has always been to hold on tightly to what’s within your comfort zone. The problem isn’t that your life isn’t changing, it’s that your life is changing and you don’t feel ready to rise to the occasion. Everything is moving forward, and leaving you behind.

So when you doubt that you are able to change your life, what you have to realize is that it is already changed. You are already different. You have already grown so much, and come so far. You have done what you are afraid of a thousand times over, you just have to get your head out of the cage you’ve build around it.

Because staying put doesn’t keep you safe, it makes you vulnerable. We only advance in life when we stop hiding out and we start taking the steps we need to.

It’s not going to transform overnight, because no change does. You didn’t get yourself stuck in one day, and you won’t get yourself unstuck that quickly, either. But if you make one micro-shift today, one tiny, almost undetectable change in your behavior, you have already done something miraculous: you have already forged one, singular neuropathway in your mind. You have made it an iota easier for yourself to do it again tomorrow, and then the next day, and then the next.

If you believe you can change your life, it is already different. If you have taken the first step today, you have already changed everything. If you are at least willing to see your life change, you have done the hardest part of all: you have already dislodged yourself from the energy you were in, and that willingness has freed you. When we aren’t gripping so tightly to what makes us feel safe, we realize something incredible: life will change itself, over time.

We are going to grow, just like we always have. The days will continue to turn, people will continue to come and go, our dreams will cohere and materialize and we’ll forget about them. We’ll get our hearts broken and recover. The growth isn’t what’s optional here, it’s the direction. Because whether or not life will continue to evolve is beyond us, it’s our nature, it’s essential, it’s nonnegotiable.

But whether we will take the reigns, and choose what we adapt to, and decide what we’re going to do with the time that we have… well, that’s how we start to blossom.

To anyone woman who has ever doubted that she has the power to change her own life: you have never lost the ability to heal yourself, you have only simply forgotten. You’ve blocked out all that power because maybe, in the past, it drove people away, or you used it for the wrong purposes. But you’re smarter now, and wiser, and more ready. Slowly, over time, you’re going to see that life is always changing, and now, you’re ready to change with it. You’re going to see that the magic of becoming is sometimes just learning how to be.