How to Better Cope With Change
Coping with change isn’t that hard. You can’t change how your mind works, but you can use its quirks to your advantage. Basically, your mind likes information it knows and understands and doesn’t like what it doesn’t know. If your mind experiences enough change in a variety of ways, it’ll allow you to operate with the understanding that change is something you can survive and even benefit from. You won’t fear it so much because the information stored in your head provides evidence that fear is unnecessary. Of course, getting to this point is easier said than done.
Accept the Inevitability of Change and Its Resulting Stress:
A few methods when learning to cope with and better-handle changing circumstances. To start, you have to accept that stress is an inevitable part of the process:
Rewriting your own “source code” is supposed to be hard. It’ll get harder to rewrite over time but if you don’t do it, you’ll eventually be left with a bunch of useless code that can’t run on current platforms. Give yourself permission to feel the change-related distress and all of the associated emotions that come along with it. It sucks but not allowing yourself to process those emotions will prevent you from moving forward. If you don’t process them you’ll have to isolate yourself from all things that represent the “distressing” change just to be able to function.
1. Think of Change Like a Software Upgrade
Looking at our lives as an operating system with software titles. As the world changes and our operating system evolves, applications that used to work may not work anymore. As a result, they need to be updated with new code in order to function in a changed environment. The events in our lives may not seem as straightforward as a few new features in Photoshop, but the principles stay the same. Handling a change to the information we use everyday requires work. We’re wired to resist it, but are better off in the long run if we don’t.
2. Allow Yourself to Freak Out, But Always Consider the Upside
Give yourself permission to freak out on your own time and then find ways to move forward positively:
This is the most difficult thing to keep in mind and to put into practice because the psychological distress caused by some changes can make having an optimistic outlook feel like an impossible task. That’s okay. Do all the crying, kicking, and screaming you need to do; then start to seek out ways to make your new situation more livable and enjoyable. Fixating on what was lost as a result of the change will prevent us from experiencing the good things that our new circumstances can bring us. After enough regular practice, managing change won’t feel like such a fearful burden. Shifting gears is rarely easy, but it isn’t supposed to be. With practice you’ll get better and it won’t feel like you’re hit with a stress bomb every time your life takes a different turn. The only way the fear and stress will disappear is if you calm down an embrace the unknown.
