Need to Change Something?

“Need to change something?” you ask. “Isn’t it enough that everything around me is changing so fast I can’t keep up?”

I see and hear it all the time. People starting to say something, then stopping, shaking their head and saying, “It isn’t like it used to be.” You may agree with Michael Fry and T. Lewis who said, in “Over the Hedge, “ “the more things change, the more they remain … insane.”

A common reaction to this is to knuckle down and try and keep as much the same as you can, while at the same time, lamenting the changes going on around you. It leaves us, I’m afraid, beating out heads against a brick wall. We become rigid in reaction to all the change going around. More determined than ever to fight it.

But isn’t there a better way? If change has become the norm, wouldn’t it be wise to become change proficient? Isn’t it better to light a candle than to curse the darkness?

To become change-proficient, first of all you have to want to. This may be the hardest part of all. It means recognizing that things are changing, and are going to, and accepting the idea. Eventually you can come to embrace it. It requires developing some Emotional Intelligence skills, such as resilience. This means being able to bounce back! Yes, you can want things to stay the same, and will them to, and do what you can about it, but some things won’t, and that’s when resilience comes in. It means being able to face loss, rejection and setbacks – which is one way to define “change” – with aplomb. Dealing with the loss, but coming back with enthusiasm and hope for the future.

Change as loss? Well, if it’s a good change, we don’t have as much trouble dealing with it. Or do we? You’d think that winning the lottery would be a “good” change, but studies show that many people simply can’t adjust to it. See what I mean about becoming change-proficient? Wouldn’t it be a shame to win the lottery and go under from the stress of it?

And the changes we don’t want, that signal the loss of something important to us, or beloved by us, require all the courage, skills and buoyancy we can muster.

The goal is not to sink into resolute self-pity or bitterness, but to rise again. “Affliction comes to us, “said H. G. Wells, British philosopher, “not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.”

If you decide to develop resilience keep in mind the stretch may cause some growing pains at first. To quote Wells again, “You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.”

When you give up the idea that things are going to be the same, you will have lost something. What will you have gained?

Most people who begin to work mindfully on their Emotional Intelligence experience immediate beneficial changes. Some are even exhilarated. Managing the emotional component of any circumstance or event may well be the crucial feature to how you cope. Notice it’s “manage,” not “control.”

If things are changing all the time, and it’s getting to you, you can learn how to not let it get to you. And then you will have lost something … but what will you have gained?