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9 Insights on Dealing with Change, Challenges, and Pain
“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~Alan Watts
This year has been one of unprecedented change for me. From January to March, I traveled to Mozambique, Africa to do volunteer work. I did not speak the language; I did not understand the culture. I was immersed in a completely strange world for two months.
In April, we put our house up for sale. The prospect of uprooting and moving is destabilizing, and one of life’s biggest stressors.
Then in May my marriage failed, and I separated from my wife. We had been together for almost nine years. I became well acquainted with pain beyond anything I had ever known.
In June I decided to attack my lifelong dream of singing in a rock band—mid-life crisis or perhaps an awakening of sorts.
In August my son left home for university. It was a very exciting and emotional time for all of us, the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
And in September my last remaining grandparent, my grandmother, died at the age of 97. She was an incredible woman who saw so much change, and packed a whole lot of life into her years.
Over the last nine months, amidst all the turbulence, challenges, and pain, a few insights gradually occurred to me:
1. Nothing is permanent.
Yet we are programmed for the opposite. We want life to feel safe and secure, and permanence gives us the illusion that it is.
The reality is that nothing is permanent, and the only thing we know we can count on is change. The more we push for permanence in life, against the current, the more disappointed we become when we find it is not achievable to the extent we think it should be. But if we can accept the fluidity of life, everything changes.
2. Time heals.
Why is it that life can look hopeful one day, and so very dark the next? Very little of my actual situation has changed from one day to the next. But my perception of it can change minute by minute based on how I am feeling in that moment—tired or rested, peaceful or angry, whole or damaged.
I am learning not to overreact in the moment, or make important decisions when I am feeling down.
3. Practice gratitude.
In the midst of turbulence, I have a strong tendency to dwell on the negative. And then everything looks dark and it snowballs.
But there are always things to be grateful for in life—my friends, my health, my relationships, my next meal. I often think back to my time in Mozambique and remember the crippling poverty that most people live with there every day. And yet they are, by and large, a happy people.
We can make a huge difference in our state of mind by focusing more on what we do have, how lucky we are, and counting our blessings.
4. Be gentle with yourself.
I am my own worst critic, focusing on my perceived failings and inadequacies. All this does, I have found, is reinforce the bad. And by reinforcing it, that is the reality I create for myself. So I am slowly learning to cut myself some slack, and perhaps even like who I am. What a concept!
There is a direct correlation between how we treat ourselves, and how we are with others out in the world. This is how we can learn to love.
Source: http://truthisscary.com/2013/11/9-insights-on-dealing-with-change-challenges-and-pain/
