Dealing with Change: Article IV

The beginning of a new year often brings with it changes …wanted or un-wanted, as well as resolutions. Since we all face change, here are some things to consider:

Change: Article IV

Tools for Dealing with Change

After looking at types of change, reasons for resistance to change, and details of change, we are ready to apply tools for dealing with change. Remember the caveat about change being individualized? Selection of tools to deal with change is also highly individualized. The types of change vary. The effective responses to change vary. In the same way, tools used to deal with change vary.

Select the ones that resonate with you, your change and your personal circumstances. Know yourself, be true to yourself, and then proceed. If you feel comfortable working with a professional or trusted friend to make your way through change, do it.

Among the tools you may employ are your own personal reactions. Are you excited? Balance this optimism and enthusiasm with a healthy analysis of reality. Know your options and likelihood of success with the change. Define what success will look like and how you will know when you have achieved it. Have a back up plan and a flexible attitude as you address change.

As you come to know yourself, know your emotional tendencies. Can you get discouraged easily? Do you rush headlong into something new? As you come to recognize your own emotional tendencies, draw on your strengths and avoid your weaknesses that don’t serve you. Find balanced objectivity. Consider research. Avoid disappointment and depression by having alternative goals, and methods.

Only bite off what you can comfortably chew. Take change in small increments and make them achievable. Work through major changes with incremental changes that are achievable and recognizable. Recognize small forms of progress and celebrate them.

Support yourself physically, emotionally and spiritually along the way. Use affirmations and evaluations to keep yourself on track. Reevaluate and adjust your attitude toward the process as you move through it. Self-care will go a long way toward your supporting yourself physically. When you are feeling overwhelmed emotionally and find yourself looking for a “way out” you know to seek council and support. Don’t abandon your personal spiritual practice. It may be just the thing you need to pave the journey to successful change.

But what if you are not particularly excited about tackling change? Perhaps you have few options and change is inevitable. You may have to reinvent yourself from the inside out. Attitude adjustment, environmental adjustment, physical adjustment all may come into play at once. Expect to make mistakes in one or all of these areas. Accept mistakes and forgive yourself for them. Believe in yourself despite making mistakes. View mistakes as part of the process of making adjustments. Tweak the details of what you are doing and who you are becoming and how you are thinking until it fits with both your view of yourself and the changes you are seeking to make. Expect more growth to happen and more changes to be needed. See where you are and move forward from there. Keep on trying. You won’t have failed unless you stop trying.

At many points you will engage in an evaluation and realize that you have achieved change. You have moved through the change and are now firmly standing on new ground. Celebrate! It is an accomplishment.

Now the secret! Don’t stop there. The minute you think you have arrived, change will happen again! Keep in mind that nothing is as certain as change. The next time you won’t be blind-sided and will be prepared, even experienced!

Some of the basic tools you used to move through change may have become second nature to you and now go un- noticed. They bear repeating and recalling. You have become capable of using them again and again:

• Recognize that change is happening! Don’t play denial games or engage with any of the emotional family related to denial. They were trivialization, complacency, and redirection. They are not your friends.

• Know and recognize your emotional reactions. Use what serves you, avoid the rest.

• Think objectively. Be clear about how it will affect you and your family.

• Have a positive attitude. Seek consultants and friends who think positively.

• Make a plan in manageable increments to work through change, then work your plan. Be proactive not a victim.

• Care for yourself. Support yourself physically with diet, exercise and rest. Support yourself emotionally by acceptance when appropriate, by constructive conversation and through outside support. Be spiritually healthy in a way that meets your needs.

• Be flexible. Evaluate. Adjust. Chunk down your changes into manageable goals.

• Relax. Take a break that is meaningful to you. It will refresh you for the challenges not yet met.

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The basic thrust of this examination is to look at change through the eyes of the fear it causes and the resistance it encourages. Coming out on the other side of change is possible and life changing. One size does not fit all when dealing with change. True to the philosophy of “A Place for the Eye to Rest”, this article does not seek to cover all the facets of change nor hope to answer all the questions and challenges that change creates. It is a jumping off place to begin your own journey with change.

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Are you addressing change in your life? A good coach can help you use tools and conversation to deal with the effects of change. BoomCoaching.org might be a resource to investigate. Speak to us at the website or at Karen@BoomCoaching.com or Rich@BoomCoaching.com