[Spirit Dancer]

Sometimes it's easy to fall into a rut of inactivity. Action seems to us to be a sure route to disaster, or a sure way to lose all that we've spent so much time building up in our lives. After all, the status quo for most people in first-world countries these days is much more than bearable, and the idea of taking risks that may sabotage our successes is not a pleasant thought.

But many of us need to make changes in our lives--we need to take actions that provide us with something different in our worlds. We need to treat people differently if we're to be more satisfied with ourselves, or we need to do our jobs better or we need to find a completely different job, one that doesn't force us to compromise our ethics or morals, if we happen to be in such a position.

Starting an exercise program, taking charge of our financial situations, telling a loved one that his or her actions are not acceptable, starting a college degree, stopping one of our own destructive behaviors--all of these need action on our part, yet all of them are threatening actions. All of them include the possibility of failure, and all of them require that we recognize a need that may be painful to recognize. But all of them will provide results that will have been worth the risk, and will have been worth the time and effort involved to reach the conclusion that we desired.