Stop Fighting Change
Grab It By The Horns And Give It Direction.
Change can be scary, but it can also be a major opportunity to create a better you, if only you know how to grab it and make it yours.
Sometimes it happens suddenly. It can be the loss of a job, the loss of someone dear, an accident of fate or an actual accident. Sometimes you see it coming a mile away, but it can still bring you down to your knees and have you collecting all the broken pieces of your heart or your soul. Or both.
Change is a thrilling experience when it’s intentional. When all of you is dedicated to make it happen, to be successful at it. A new place to live, a new job, that cute guy or girl you were bold enough to call and ask out.
When you’re suddenly thrown in a whirlwind of change, it’s not as fun — until you make that whirlwind your own.
Turn the loss of a job into an opportunity for a new career. The loss of a relationship into an opportunity to meet new and better people. The move to a new town into an opportunity to reinvent yourself.
Of course, for all of those things, there is a mourning period.
There’s pain and there’s grief for what was lost. Allow yourself to feel those feelings. Give yourself time, but — and here is the trick — don’t give yourself too much time, otherwise healthy grieving becomes wallowing in grief and pain like a pig in the mud. Don’t. After all, don’t they say you should “strike while the iron is hot?”
You can grab change by the horns and turn it any direction you want. How?
By having standards
Set the standards for your life. Define who you want to be and how you want to get there, never let others define that for you. Only then you can set a path and find the drive to tread it.
Have standards for your career, your relationships, your routine, your health. Those will help to redirect you if you’re let go, get dumped, get sick. If your standards are low, or set by someone other than yourself, you’ll get in with the direction life shifts you instead of directing it yourself.
By asking for help
The standards and goals are your own, but who said you have to chase them by yourself?
We all have a network of people around us, and most are more than willing to help out a friend. Reach out, tell them what you’re looking for. What other other people can make happen for you out of pure kindness will surprise you.
By refusing to be a victim
You lost your job. You got dumped. Poor you.
Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, collect the lessons learned and get on with your life.
Grieving over what you lost is part of the process, but that process looks very different than framing yourself as a helpless victim. As long as you have agency over your life, you’re not a victim. Much less a helpless one. Don’t blame the world for your problems, take the reins of your life and tell the world to go shove it.
By not fighting it
No, you’re not supposed to just accept any and all shit people throw your way. But you do have to pick your battles.
When you fight change, you’re mostly wasting precious energy.
When bulls fight each other, they run head-on, clashing their horns. As a human being, I can’t advise you to try clashing head on with a bull. You can dodge it, dance around it, and when you find an opening, take the chance to grab it by horns.
In the end, chance is shaped by how you choose to face it.
It’s up to you, and only you, to direct it however you want.
