Change is constant in life and it is something that many of us both fear and try to avoid at all costs.

We create elaborate self-deceptions to convince ourselves that we do not need to change or that we can avoid the pain and discomfort of the change during the process itself.

The result of this is that we often restrict our potential by refusing to seek out or embrace opportunities because they may involve significant changes having to be made to our current circumstances.

It is very often incredibly difficult to see how the proposed or anticipated change will have a beneficial effect on our life, as we are so committed or used to our present ‘normal’ situation that we just can’t visualise the ‘new normal’ ahead of us.

I often wonder how the caterpillar would feel if it were aware that it has always had within it the capacity to be a butterfly.

All it needs is the right circumstances and sufficient time to allow the process to run its course.

If the caterpillar were to avoid the pain of the change process – during which it is annihilated as a caterpillar and reborn as something far more ephemeral and beautiful – it would never know the joy of being a butterfly.

Few changes we are ever likely to face in life will be as dramatic as that of the caterpillar.

Yet, if we view change as an act of creation and not as an inconvenience or something to be feared, we always have the potential to experience something of the wonder of the caterpillar as it emerges from the cocoon, stretches its wings and lifts itself into the air.