A Change Question - What Do I Want This Change To Leave Me With?

What Do I Want This Change To Leave With Me?

Every change leaves something behind.
 A lesson.
 A trace.
 A quieter understanding of who we are becoming.

In this final episode of A Change Question, Ali invites you to pause and reflect on one last question:
What do I want this change to leave with me?

Drawing on Viktor Frankl, T S Eliot, Maya Angelou, and a closing reading from Rainer Maria Rilke, this episode explores how meaning settles after change, and how we can carry learning forward with care.

This is not advice.
 It is a gentle ending.
 A moment to honour what has shaped you, and to stay close to the questions that will continue to guide you.

A reflective close to the A Change Question mini-series from The Inner Game of Change.

Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast

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Chapters

• 0:00 A Question About Change
• 0:38 Wisdom From Frankl, Eliot, Angelou
• 1:51 Naming The Residue Of Change
• 3:00 A Gentle Practice For Closure
• 4:33 Live The Questions

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

I want to begin with a moment from Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. Frankel noticed something profound while living through extraordinary hardship. He observed that when everything external is stripped away, something internal still remains, a residue, a trace of meaning, a quiet shaping of who we become through what we endure. That idea stays with me because when change passes through our lives, it rarely leaves us untouched. It leaves us something behind. And that brings me to the final question in this series. What do I want this change to leave me with? It also makes me think of a line from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot. We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Change does not always take us somewhere new. Sometimes it brings us back to ourselves, but wiser, softer, and more aware. And then there is Maya Angelo. She once said that people may forget what you said or what you did, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. Change leaves emotional traces in us and in others. Frankel, Iliot, Angelo, different lenses, the same truth. Change always leaves something behind. The question is whether we notice it. I am Ali Jemma and I have a change question. This is a short solo series inside the inner game of change, just me exploring the questions that stay with me and offering them to you in case they stay with you too. It is not therapy, it is not advice. It is simply a quiet moment to pause together and think about the changes shaping our lives. What do I want this change to leave me with? Here's something I have learned over time. When a change ends, we often rush to the next thing, the next goal, the next improvement, the next chapter. But when we do that, we miss the integration, we miss the moment where learning settles into wisdom. Not every change needs to leave us with success or clarity or closure. Sometimes what matters most is what it leaves us with internally. A boundary, a habit, a deeper patience, or a stronger sense of what matters. Stories understand this beautifully. Think of Odysseus at the end of the Odyssey. The journey is over, but he does not return unchanged. The war, the wandering, the losses have shaped how he sees home, loyalty and belonging. And think of Elizabeth Bennett at the end of a pride and prejudice. What the story leaves her with is not just love, but self-knowledge. She becomes someone who sees herself more clearly. The destination matters, but the residue matters more. Psychologists often talk about meaning making. It is the process through which we interpret experience and decide what it meant for us. Without that step, change stays noisy. With it change becomes formative. This is where growth consolidates, not in the doing but in the understanding. So maybe the final act of any change is not action. It is reflection. If you want a gentle way to complete a change, he is a simple practice. Look back. What did this change demand of you? Courage? Patience? Letting go? Look within. What did strengthen or softening you? What feels different now? Look forward. What do you want to carry with you from this experience? Not the stress, not the struggle, but the learning. When we name what we want to keep, change becomes a teacher rather than a disruption. And here's something that feels important to say. What a change leaves with you will also shape others. A leader who carries humility forward creates safer teams. A parent who carries patience forward changes the emotional rhythm of a home. A person who carries self-respect forward alters every future choice. The residue of change travels. Before I close this series, I want to read a short passage that has stayed with me for many years. It comes from Rainer Maria Relka in his book Letters to a Young Poet. Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign language. Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you wouldn't be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually without noticing it, live a long some distant day into the answer. That feels like the heart of this series to me. Not rushing to answers, not forcing clarity, but learning to live the questions that shape us. So here's my final question for you and for this series. What do you want the changes you have lived through to leave you with? And how will you carry that forward with care? I will leave you with this. Stay close to your questions and thank you. Thank you. Thank you for walking through these change questions with me. Wherever you are in your own change, remember this. You do not need all the answers to move forward. Sometimes staying close to the right question is enough. Until next time.