How to thrive during a transition
It happens every day we wake up. Life comes at us and we have the daily choice of how we respond. Sometimes though it seems life is throwing more our way than we know how to handle. Life seems to have slowly changed and then we wake up and we are on the other side and we don’t know how to process and accept our new place in life. I find lots of clients suffer from anxiety or depression when dealing with change because although it is inevitable, change is hard for most. Here are some ways to help move yourself through change so you can get back to feeling like yourself.
1. Acceptance: From the point in which life happens to the point we accept what happens we suffer. A lot of change that happens in a person’s life is out of their control. The sooner we can accept and live in the reality of that, the less we have to suffer. To gain acceptance sometimes we have to change our perspective. Instead of feeling like everything is happening to us, we have to allow the space to know that everything is going exactly the way it should be. Instead of looking at the burden of the change, it is so much better to find the blessing that lies within every change. Whether or not we accept the change, it has already happened, and knowing it was for a reason, makes it easier to swallow.
2. Act Instead of Reacting: Every day we have a decision to make steps towards the life we want. When we start to take action towards the life we want, we can choose our day and how it unfolds, instead of just responding. Therefore, when life changes the sooner we can start taking action to make the change work in our favor, the less anxiety we have over the change. The truth is we never know what our future has in store for us, all we can do is our small part to shape it. For example, you hear you are going to get a new boss. That makes you very anxious because you don’t know what to expect and you were very happy with your old boss. Your mind starts to spin on the “what if’s” of life. What if the new boss is mean; what if the new boss is rigid; what if he thinks I am dumb, and so on. Instead of worrying about all what if’s that you can’t control, move into a place of action that helps create the relationship you want with your new boss. If you want a friendly relationship, write a welcome email to the new boss or bring the new boss breakfast. Take action instead of just worrying and then rest easy knowing you have done what you can to make the change in your life a positive one.
3. Fear or Forgetting Everything is All Right! Most of the time when things change we have a lot of fear of the unknown. Fear is necessary to keep us out of harm’s way, but most of us fear things that never come to fruition. Having this fear keeps us from accepting and acting on the changes happening in our life. We all have fears, so when they well up, we have to analyze them. I start with asking myself how likely is this fear to come true? Is there anything I can do to reduce this fear? (if so, take action). What if I changed my perspective to expecting the best instead of the worse, how does that feel? Once we realize that our fears are most likely either unfounded or beyond our control we can go back to acceptance. Realizing that if we take the action we need to and accept the change, we have nothing to fear.
4. Letting go. This goes hand in hand with acceptance, but sometimes we have to let go of what we thought our life was going to look like before we can accept the new life we are in. I admit when I got divorced I was lost, I had a picture of what my life would look like and I woke up one day feeling like that picture was shattered. Now what do I do and who am I? I was holding onto a picture of something that was no longer there and no longer served me. But to truly let go I had to give myself time to grieve. It was overwhelming for sure, all the new options of life spinning in my head, where do I start? What I had to do, and I encourage you to do, is to sit in your feelings and be sad, upset, mad, and feel whatever it is you feel. Get it all out and really feel it. But once you have your pity party and mourn the loss of your old life it is time to start taking action towards the new life you want. Even when it is overwhelming I encourage you to take the first little bite of the new life sandwich. Before you know it you will look back and have moved boldly in a new direction that you wanted and created. We all have the ability and opportunity to change the picture of what we want out of life every day. Just remember life is a journey, not a destination, and our attitude and response while on that journey is what makes our life a positive or negative one. Everything is a blessing if we chose to see it that way.