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Change in Life - Don't Endure it, Embrace it. |
A change can be positive or negative. While a positive change is looked forward to, anything negative invites, resistance and/or reluctance as the immediate reaction.
Body, Mind, and Soul are the strong three elements that makes you what you are and each of it takes its time to accustom to a change.
Body – For your body, something as simple as a change in diet would mean, your body will take time to adjust to it.
Mind - Everything is so connected to your mind including changes to your body and your mind is tuned to alert change. A mind has been programmed to trigger every part of you to the fact of change asking you to assess how to take it, beneficial or not. It is when the mind concludes or accustoms itself, an acceptance comes. This can be mere acceptance or the mind changing course to react to the change sadly apprehensively or aggressively.
Soul – This is the most powerful of the three elements. And even for the soul, a change is something new to be assessed for the benefit. A soul is the inner being which is a universe by itself and if I delve into it, this blog will take a spiritual direction.
So, for now, let us limit ourselves to the fact that, we take time to accept a change.
In a way, we actually forget how to adapt to change as we grow older and our little kids are actually more experienced to handle situations of change better than us. I would say, the small children are our teachers in reminding us on how to react to change. In a simple scenario of a nursery child changing school, the child is full of energy and goes without any apprehensions getting ready for something new. If the same child was to change school after he/she grows, the reaction could probably be of, “Sadness” say for losing friends or “Fear” of acceptance or “Frustration” of physical or mental discomfort.
Basically, as we grow older our “Mind” tends to send more caution signals instead of signals of excitement. Eventually, it starts predicting the outcomes to change. This is also due to the fact that, experiences gained over time makes the mind to build expectation over every change and with expectations comes the fear of failure or disappointment. All the excitement of getting something new for the little child in us was because of how the little mind does not conclude an outcome and it only welcomes the idea of something new. So the key here is, predicting an outcome and that too to be a negative outcome is an unhealthy way of making our Three Elements receive a Change.
Does this mean, we should be happy to receive each and every change? Let us say, an accident caused a temporary disability to walk. Even this is a change. Can this be received happily? of course, it cannot be. This situation is sad, however, the reality is that the situation is real and the person needs to have the ability to embrace the change. So what do we mean here to embrace a change?
It is fairly simple,
Step 1 – Acknowledge the fact of change:
Have the reality check to acknowledge a change. While the example of an accident is having a physical impact, acknowledgment is automatic. However, in most situations that impact the emotional state, the human mind first resists to the change and lacks acknowledgment. Instead, the mind attempts to avoid the thought of it and the more it avoids the more it thinks and gets stressed. So eventually all the Three Elements are stressed. So the obvious first step is to acknowledge a change.
Step 2 - Assess the change:
Once the mind acknowledges it is already programmed by the Law of Nature to assess the consequences of the change. The only issue here is that, if the acknowledgment was a stressful process and the mind has taken a long time over it, then, it has experienced negative emotions and as a result, it would predict negative outcomes as part of its assessment to change. Hence, take your Step 2 with a caution that your mind is under influence of stress or has been impacted by stress.
Once the mind acknowledges it is already programmed by the Law of Nature to assess the consequences of the change. The only issue here is that, if the acknowledgment was a stressful process and the mind has taken a long time over it, then, it has experienced negative emotions and as a result, it would predict negative outcomes as part of its assessment to change. Hence, take your Step 2 with a caution that your mind is under influence of stress or has been impacted by stress.
An important way of embracing a change is to free the mind of stress by reiterating the acknowledgment to change and to enable the mind to assess what the change brings with it as an experience for the three elements. The measure to assessing a change is not by predicting negative outcomes but by evaluating the benefits and challenges it brings along to the body, mind and/or soul. List down all the benefits and the challenges the change brings to make a healthy assessment of the change.
Step 3 – Design the Managing Strategy:
Once you have listed down the benefits and challenges its time to decide how you want to manage the change. I would not call it an acceptance to change here. Managing does not mean you must endure the pain of a change to your three elements. Let us say, your body shows signs of illness with the change in diet. You will continue it? No. Likewise, a life-changing situation is causing emotional pain, you want to endure it? No. But there is a level of acceptance to the change that is happening that you must prepare your body, mind, and soul for. Because, if it’s a diet you volunteered yourself for then you can change it. But if you have been mandated for your health reasons, you need to take the diet even if you do not like it. Hence designing a strategy for managing the change is your step towards embracing it. Develop a strategy for managing the change and your key here is that, your three elements should not suffer. Build some level of acceptance to the change and also try and find alternative ways of managing that makes your three elements generate more positive energy and gives a sense of satisfaction. That is the key to how you approach managing the change. At the end of each day when you go through a change circumstance make a self-assessment of your day. For what went wrong, just get your learning out of it and do not carry any sense of hurt or guilt or discomfort. Keep your thoughts and intent positive and to the benefit of your body, mind, and soul and do not allow for negative emotions to affect the health of your body, mind, and soul. This is the managing strategy that will bring ultimate success. It does not matter if you are running last in the race because what matters is who comes first in the end.
Once you have listed down the benefits and challenges its time to decide how you want to manage the change. I would not call it an acceptance to change here. Managing does not mean you must endure the pain of a change to your three elements. Let us say, your body shows signs of illness with the change in diet. You will continue it? No. Likewise, a life-changing situation is causing emotional pain, you want to endure it? No. But there is a level of acceptance to the change that is happening that you must prepare your body, mind, and soul for. Because, if it’s a diet you volunteered yourself for then you can change it. But if you have been mandated for your health reasons, you need to take the diet even if you do not like it. Hence designing a strategy for managing the change is your step towards embracing it. Develop a strategy for managing the change and your key here is that, your three elements should not suffer. Build some level of acceptance to the change and also try and find alternative ways of managing that makes your three elements generate more positive energy and gives a sense of satisfaction. That is the key to how you approach managing the change. At the end of each day when you go through a change circumstance make a self-assessment of your day. For what went wrong, just get your learning out of it and do not carry any sense of hurt or guilt or discomfort. Keep your thoughts and intent positive and to the benefit of your body, mind, and soul and do not allow for negative emotions to affect the health of your body, mind, and soul. This is the managing strategy that will bring ultimate success. It does not matter if you are running last in the race because what matters is who comes first in the end.
Step 4 – Act or React:
The strategy guides your mind, body, and soul on how to act or react to the change and if you have done your Step 1 to Step 3 right, you would act or react to a change in the most positive way which gives your three elements excitement and/or contentment. You have Embraced the Change.
This approach can be applied, be it a life-changing circumstance you have volunteered for or have been forced into. In the end, it is all about how you embrace it into your life. Keep in mind, the human knows his capacity the most when life challenges him/her and your performance is measured by how you embraced it.
