Embrace The Fear Of Change And Find A Path To Move Forward
Why do we fear change in our lives? How can we overcome it to move our lives forward?
Let’s Define Change
MacMillan Dictionary issues a “countable” definition of change as:
A situation in which something becomes different or you make something different.
This one is probably the most meaningful one to me within the journey of my life at this point. Other definitions I found from a Google search:
To give up (something) in exchange for something else.
To remove (something dirty or faulty) and replace it with another of the same kind.
The definitions above really spoke to me. I am both ecstatic and terrified at the year that lies beyond the decisions that I have to make in a week or so. I’m in a situation where I need to make something different. I need to give up something in exchange for something else.
Decisions, Decisions…
Making any decision about the path that you choose to take in life can be stressful. You hope that the decisions that you have to make will be the right ones, and you fret over the consequences of those decisions.
I don’t know about you, but I have an uncanny ability to think way beyond my immediate choices and freak myself out on things that might happen if I choose the wrong path. The anxiety of the unknown sometimes stops my decision making because it’s too difficult to think outside the box. It’s stressful to picture myself in a different situation, mostly because I’ve gotten so use to my present existence.
Will I be able to rebuild myself in a new environment?
What will others think of the choices I’m making?
What if I fail?
What if right now is as good as it actually gets, and my “grass is greener on the other side” mentality is flawed?
Fear of Change
What do we fear most about change?
Is it the unknown? Is it a fear of failure? Is it a fear of criticism?
You’ve trained so hard to be the best that you can be in your current status.. how will you ever be able to start over and build again?
From lifehacker.com regarding the stress of change:
In theory, change should be simple. When walking down the street, say you come to a construction site and need to change your path. By scanning around the area you should be able to find a detour and follow it to get where you want to go. Inherently, this situation shouldn’t cause any stress but our brains offer a number of special quirks that cause us to see things differently. Because we’ve taken the normal path before, we don’t worry that it’ll take us where we want to go.
When we run into a roadblock, suddenly information we trusted has broken down. Where does the other road lead? How long will it take? Is it dangerous? What we don’t know tends to scare us, and change creates a lot of things we don’t know. As a result, we tend to act pretty irrationally to try and prevent change, often without realizing it, and make our lives unnecessarily problematic.
I want to trust my intuition. When it’s telling me that I need a change in my life, I hope I have the courage to be honest with myself, and follow my intuition to change something for the better. Sometimes you don’t or can’t really see the ultimate outcome from the change that you need to make, so this is where courage of conviction plays a huge role:
To have the confidence to act or behave in accordance with one’s beliefs or ideologies, especially in the face of resistance, criticism, or persecution
You feel it, and you know with every ounce of your being that it’s the right move to make, but you still can’t escape the fear of what will happen. Can you courageously overcome it? Can you embrace change, understand that it can affect your life in a positive way? You have to remain positive, keep perspective, and trust yourself.
How Do We EMBRACE Change And Move Forward?
1) Go Slow
One way to tackle the fear of change is to slowly change a few things one a time. There’s no need to pull the rug out from under yourself. Sometimes there are ways that you can grow into the change that you need to accomplish just by making small changes each day towards your goal.
If your goal is to eventually leave your corporate job to create your own business and you’re afraid of failure, maybe you should slowly take action everyday towards that bigger goal by breaking down each day/week/month into tiny micro goals that lead you toward the success that you envision.
2) Communicate
Don’t hold your frustrations inside. There are hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of people dealing with the fear of change in the exact same way that you are. When you keep your fears submerged, those that have taken the plunge before you won’t understand how they can help, and you’ll never connect.
Be vocal about the changes that you feel you need to make. Tell your family, your friends, and your mentors what you feel that you need to do. Chances are someone has already had that experience, and they will be happy to give you their tips and tricks of navigating the pit falls of your decisions.
3) Stay Focused
You’ll have the nay-sayers. You’ll have people doubt you. You’ll start to believe it yourself, regardless of your inner strength. You’ll be derailed and pushed to the edge. It’s the universe resisting change right along with you. There will be moments where you feel that there’s no path to success. But it’s all in your mind.
Your instinct, your “gut feeling” that you can do better is ALWAYS right. Stay focused on the change that needs to happen. You know it’s needed even though you can’t quite envision the outcome. Why do you understand this? Because you DO, and you don’t have to justify that belief to anyone!
4) Create A Plan Of Action
Create a plan that organizes the stages of change in your life. Stay alert and be aware of the emotions that will surface. Remember that they are all a part of the process, and you have to find a way through each order to win.
To coincide with Step 1, start with a small move, a small goal that you can win quickly. This will allow you to build momentum as you embrace obstacles and work your way to accomplish bigger and bigger goals.
You know that you need change.. maybe even the type of change.. Now answer the question WHY? As you define your Why, then put the rest of the pieces together like the How and What you’ll need to do as you embrace the change you seek.
I spoke about this in a previous post here:
5) Keep A Positive Outlook
Change in your life comes at a cost. Everything worth having comes at a cost. You will have to give something up: your comfort, your time, some financial investment, your patience, and possibly your passion. You might lose friends, you might make less money, or you might actually lose yourself for a bit. But what drove that change was your intuition. You believed that something wasn’t right and you needed to act in order to change your trajectory.
Stay positive and trust yourself. The more positive that you can be, the more you’ll shine that light on others. You will embolden someone around you to take action by watching you take the first step. Positivity can be one of the strongest forces against negativity in our lives.
I will be making some important changes in my life this year within my music career. They are changes that I’ve needed to make for years, but until now, I did not have the courage to move forward. I held on to the insanity of thinking that the same thing over and over would yield a different result.
We trap ourselves into thinking that we can’t move forward. We’ll miss out. We’ll mess up the relationships, and the statuses that we’ve created.
I’ve told myself for a long time to stay the course. I am a pretty positive person and I think part of this choice was about trusting others around me to make the right decisions. I now know that this was flawed. I’m in the process of changing small things at a time, as I’ve suggested above.
I’m communicating my desire for change with my closest friends and family and now I’m finally focused on a plan of action to welcome the changes that I need to make. I do not claim to be the expert here, but as I embrace the changes that I need to make, I embrace them with positivity, clarity, and I have to trust my “gut” that I’m doing the right thing.
What kind of changes have you made in your life?
Did you confide in those closest to you? Did you face criticism?
Leave me some responses and lets connect! If you enjoyed this post, Clap for me, even up to 50 times if you like!
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