Changing direction is a strange thing, isn’t it? Whether put upon us or chosen by us, a change will always come with a degree of difficulty and challenge to it. It doesn’t help that, on some level, changing direction has come to acquire pejorative meaning too. It can be perceived as having failed at our original plans and the need for change is in response to that rather than for a positive reason. Perhaps you have experiences where you have had to change direction due to circumstances beyond your control, or you’ve planned for something that didn’t quite work out how you hoped and had to pivot. We’ve been thinking about this a lot lately while working on some changes for CloudCloth behind the scenes.
We think change, and the challenges that come with it, can be a very good thing. It depends on how we choose to look at it that can make all the difference.
From the beginning, CloudCloth has been about giving ourselves permission to be flexible, to reset our sails as needed, to follow our interests and curiosity. It is this way of thinking that led to us finding the cloths in the first place, to getting them into your hands, and will always be at the centre of what we do. Though we appreciate this might not always be possible, we think a key difference in having confidence to change direction is in the intention attached to it. Intentional changes in direction feel different because we have a more active role in them. We are saying to ourselves “this is the set of circumstances and this is how I am choosing to overcome them because of this specific reason”. Intentional changes seem to have a bigger picture in mind, an end goal with a richer purpose.
We know well the frustrations of wanting to move in a certain direction and coming up against various obstacles. We know well how it feels to wander down a path only to come up against yet another wall. However, we also know well the power that comes with overcoming those challenges through adapting to the situation with a clear purpose in mind, through being intentional and creative in where we go next.
As we take intentional steps forwards into the next part of our story, we hope you will give yourself permission to step forwards in yours too.
