Change - Humans Hate It, How to Manage It

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Cyndi Safstrom

I am a Life Coach who helps Mid Lifers reconnect to their life dreams.
Are your Kids Gone or nearly so, and you feel like it's Now Time for You?
How about reconnecting with that Something that you LOVE to do?

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Change - Humans Hate It, How to Manage It
Change.....It can be brutal. I guess the hardest one is the death of a loved one. There are also lovely little changes like divorce, jobs going away, kids leaving home, new bosses, moving, the list goes on.

But wait a minute. If there wasn't change, you'd stay an infant, and never grow up. You would never go to kindergarten and start school. You'd never get married, nor have kids. So ok, change can be good.

What is it about change that makes human beings so nervous? Well, there's definitely uncertainty. I don't like that much. But what is it really that rattles us so?

The bottom line is that change is necessary and guaranteed, all the time.

We dislike change because it triggers fear. But if change can be good, why is fear our initial reaction? What are we really afraid of? We are afraid that the New will feel worse than the Present, that the change will result in our having less than we do now. It's easy to get hung up on the fear of change, to the point that any thought that things could end up better, is obliterated.

The "what ifs" begin, but often they mostly seem to be negative.

Think of the things we sometimes do to avoid having to confront change. You hate your job, but you don't make the effort to look for alternatives. After all, the new job could end up being worse, or you could end up with no job. Or you're unhappy in a relationship, but you stay because you don't know how it will feel to be alone. A lot of moving forward in our lives is grossly delayed by the fears around change.

I'm an "I'll feel more like doing it tomorrow" kind of avoider. I know now that when I start saying that around a move, there's some fear lurking.

So what is a healthy method of dealing with change in our lives? I think an acknowledgment of the fear is a good place to start. There's nothing wrong with you, most humans react that way; it just comes with the territory. Acknowledge it, but don't beat yourself up. The next step might be to force yourself to focus on all the positive things that this change could bring you. Make a list, if you need to. My guess is that you won't need to make any extra effort to have the negative possibilities flood your brain.

Then remember that fear doesn't mean stop. It's a part of the human condition, and the willingness to embrace the change anyway, is one difference between the happy people and the miserable ones.

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