Sometimes it seems that it’s too late to change. Even when we long for something new, something refreshing, we can feel defeated before we begin.

Life can take us so far down a certain track that retracing our steps seems impossible. After all, we’ve invested much time and energy reaching where we are; we have relationships embedded into our way of life; we have financial commitments to meet. Life can become molded like a worn-out shoe; it may not be comfortable but it is familiar.

The good news is that there is hope! My favourite quote from George Eliot gets to the heart of it:

It’s never too late to be who you might have been

You see, what actually stops us making the changes we want is not the circumstances we are in but the thoughts we have about those circumstances. If we think it is impossible to change path, then impossible is exactly how we experience it. If we think that a relationship stops us making changes, then that is what we experience. If we think it is too late to change – it is!!

Liberation comes from realising that at any time you can have a new thought. In the blink of an eye, you can have a new thought and there is a never-ending supply of them. And for each of us, all that keeps new thoughts away is the attention we give to old thoughts.

How can you know if you are giving lots of attention to old, stale thoughts? Because if you are, you will feel stale. Your feelings are a great indicator of what you are thinking.

So whenever you feel dull, listless, drained or defeated, you are re-thinking old thoughts. They may seem so ‘important’ that you ‘have to’ keep thinking them. But when you withdraw your attention from them, you immediately open up space for new thought. And with new thought comes new possibilities.

This is what inspiration really is: fresh thinking that awakens, energises and motivates us. We all have the built-in ability to be inspired because we can all receive fresh thoughts. It’s only our obsession with worn-out thoughts that keeps us stuck. It’s never too late…!