Best Tips for Dealing with Change in Life

Meditation

Aug 1

Not everyone is keen on adaptation. It is common for people to resist change to remain in a comfortable state in life. In this blog post, I will be giving you tips on how to cope with change healthily. Whether it be change on purpose, situational changes, or change necessary for your well-being.

Why Dealing With Change Isn't Easy

I remember getting in my car to go to work, working my 9 to 5 job with my hour lunch. It was very predictable. Sometimes I would get sushi from Kroger for lunch or order Chipotle with the rest of the team. Then, I would go home and watch a movie and make dinner. This routine would repeat until the weekend.

Sometimes when going through change, whether that feels positive or negative, we are afraid of leaving the past behind. If someone has had the same friends all her life, then she would associate negative feelings about a major change that requires her to move away from them. Even if this change is for the better, like a job change or the opportunity to travel the world. She may find it difficult to move forward and leave her friends behind.

It's not a bad thing that we have habits and create structure in our lives. Structure and routine are important for the formation of ideas. They create healthy habits like time management and consistency. As a creative, I find structure and routine very helpful, as they allow me to be creative in other areas rather than trying to fit everything I have to do on a randomized schedule. So, how can a person deal with change that may uproot this kind of structure or habit?

Change How You Think

You will find a common theme in mindfulness and manifestation that your mind is the key to unlocking a better version of yourself and that it is unlimited to what it can do. If you want to lose weight or make $1 million, then it starts with your mindset and the way you think.

If you are changing something as drastic as cutting sugar out of your life, this can be very uncomfortable in the beginning. Using this example sugar is highly addictive. So to make this change, you have to first tackle the mind and all negative feelings about this situation. There are all kinds of reasons that people don’t want to change and that they would rather stay where they are. So with the example of giving up sugar, this can be a brutal change because some people rely on sugar to make them feel better if they’re stressed. If there’s a minor inconvenience in their life or they’re feeling upset, the consumption of sugar can raise dopamine levels which will help a person to feel calm and happy. Detoxing from sugar means removing this coping mechanism which is not easy. Your body goes through withdrawals, headaches, and cravings, but after a short time of feeling bad, you begin to feel better and healthier. The resistance to change is often to avoid the pain that you may experience. This can lead to self-sabotage, and you may avoid change altogether to stay comfortable.

Changing how you think starts with adopting a positive mindset. When you are going through positive change, list all the wonderful things that will come out of this experience. Even if negative thoughts exist, you are still in alignment to achieve this positive change.

Show Yourself Self-Care

Positive change can still be uncomfortable because you are leaving an old situation and entering a new one. Even if this changes for the better like getting a new job or moving into a new place maybe you feel uncomfortable because you have to relearn things again.

When I went to France for the first time I felt like an alien in a different land. My French was not perfect and even though coming to this land was something that I wanted, it was still difficult to manage leaving all of my friends and family and learning a new language. To avoid feeling overwhelmed I would journal and meditate. I would wake up open the curtains and look out the window to take in the beauty. Even if I felt overwhelmed being displaced, I found myself grateful to have made it to the country of my dreams. To practice self-kindness and care with this major change, I would sit in the park and breathe and look around me and remind myself that this is exactly what I wanted. Whenever I have the time to sit in silence and practice deep breathing.

Be sure to be kind to yourself when you are experiencing the effects of change. Unexpected events can make you doubt if this is a good thing but treat yourself with kindness by being understanding with yourself. Change has its moments of excitement and uncertainty, but to reduce stress be sure to reach out to a support group and family members. When you have people who support and love you, you can see past doubt.

When I lived in France, I had a lot of social connections that made me feel less overwhelmed because I could talk to them about what I was going through. It is important to find people who you will be able to connect with. Nothing is perfect, so don’t put on a mask or a disguise that everything is going well when you may feel alone or scared inside. Be honest with yourself and your trusted loved ones because change requires you to be true to yourself.

Dealing with Negative Change

Some changes can have negative effects on mental health. This can be an effect of a breakup, a divorce in the family, the childhood house burning down, adjusting to a new way of life after a major accident, etc. These types of changes are not things that we want to prepare ourselves for in fact, just thinking about them, can create stress. Avoiding these changes can cause many to live in the past or even the future and avoid the present altogether. Mindfulness practices can help you cope with situations that feel out of your control.

A personal example of a change with a negative effect is when I was 14, my parents divorced and it was difficult to deal with as a teenager. I didn’t know a lot of the tools that I use now as a person who can understand various positions in life. It still affects me in different ways and when I hang out with my mother and father separately. Part of me and my 26-year-old body feels like I want to go back to the past when my parents were together and relieve everything. I can't do anything to bring them back together, So how do I move forward with this new change? I had to accept this as the way things were going to be. Things change all the time in life and I had to shift my mindset to see this change as a real part of my life. The more I resisted, the harder it became to heal from.

A great practice is to sit with your emotions even if they feel too uncomfortable to sit through. Understanding why you are upset, can give you a better sense of your feelings around this change.

It’s a good thing to journal about your feelings and rest with them instead of being distracted by your phone or distracting yourself with going out and doing activities when you should be unraveling how you feel. Here are some journal prompts that you can use to address your feelings about this kind of change:

How do I feel about what is happening?
What do I think I am supposed to learn from this change?
What would I like to happen from this experience?
How have I responded to this change? How would I like to respond?

Take Away Trail

Change can be good and result in many blessings as well as lessons. The issue can be going through the discomfort of letting go. It's normal to feel some resistance at first, but these tips are here to help you keep going even if you feel your life has just done a complete 180. You can overcome this and God will always see you through. Stay close to Him, seek support from loved ones, and stay true to yourself.

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Anaiis Simon