Change: love it or … leave it?

Today's post is especially for those of you looking at a big change in your life.

We humans easily fall into patterns and routines. We sit at the same table when we go to our favorite café and get irritated when someone else is there already. Our clothes choices become predictable; our dinner menus are a few standbys. rotated either by chance or design.

Work is a place of ritual and repetition for most of us. Remote or in person, we do the same tasks, communicate with a small group of people, and look forward to a steady income stream.

Then--change happens. Obviously Covid-19 is the instigator for much of the rapid, erratic changes we are now living through. Whatever our lives looked like in March 2020, I am willing to bet that not one person on the planet is still living that life.

And what's most upsetting is that change is still happening and is not yet finished! Whatever we accommodate now and adjust to (at work, socially, at school, at our place of worship, in our families) will probably change again next week.

Change: love it...or leave it. But we can't leave it, can we? So can we love it?

Maybe "love" isn't the word you'd use for the changes in your life, but maybe you can move in that direction by doing three simple things: accept the need to change, stop fighting it, and shift your focus to something new.

Accept the situation

It's easy to resist change. We can get mad about whatever has changed, or we can try to ignore it. We can whine, moan and groan, panic, and whisper to our friends that the change is unendurable. We can lay blame on whoever's "causing" the change, be disgruntled, wallow in our disappointment, and so on.

Or we can use our intellect rather than our emotions and recognize what is right in front of us: something has changed, and the old ways will not work anymore.

Stop fighting the fact that you will need to change, too

We are often so tied to our view of ourselves as living a certain kind of life that we fight against anything that calls that public self-image into question. In such a case, our identity rests in what we do rather than who we are inside ourselves (our character, morals, beliefs, goals, and experiences).

So when our outer life changes (without our consent!), we may be affronted, enraged, and insulted. Our public self is being challenged. Losing our job, having a personal relationship end, being forced to drop out of college or move to a new place, going through the death of someone we deeply love, having our financial situation become precarious...all of these perceived and actual losses of social status, economic security, and emotional stability are especially painful in terms of how we see ourselves in society.

But we are more than a social self. We all possess vast inner resources that define us even more than our outer accomplishments and place in society. When we accept the changes, we can stop fighting them and draw on our inmost self.

Focus on seeing change as opportunity, not just something that's upsetting or threatening

After acceptance and cessation of resistance comes the beginning of something new. Most of us have buried dreams and longed-for ways of doing and being. Our lives as we knew them pre-change were not perfect.

Now is the time to allow our most authentic self to take center stage. Thinking is free, so devote ample thinking time to ways that bring together the unexpressed parts of your personality with new ideas of how to live.

This will get you going in some now-unknown directions. Don't try too hard to choose one direction right away; let your ideas mix together freely. Who knows what will result?

Change is hard to love. No one is 100% comfortable with letting go of what they know. But when you give yourself permission to think and dream, good things will happen.

For more on how to "reinvent your future," click on the link under the book!



https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978633776?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860