Is Your Reality Shifting? How To Live With Change

How To Live With Change

Do you profess to like change, or does change fill you with dread?  I guess, your answer would be, “it depends”, which of course it does.  It depends on the situation we currently find ourselves in – good, bad or indifferent, according to our own expectations; or, it depends on the area of our lives that’s facing the change as we may be more amenable to changes in, say, the workplace than in our personal lives; or maybe it depends on whether it is expected or unexpected change and how much control we believe we’ll have over the results of the change.

But, we only usually want things to change because we want some kind of improvement.  After all if everything was exactly as we wanted it, why would we seek change?  Sydney J Harris says:

Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.

An interesting thought in which I see some truth, although of course, application of this theory is impossible!  If we want to see changes in our lives, then by definition, we must change something.  The trick, I guess, is in making an acceptable change, knowing, that in making a change, other reactions will come into play.  This is like the cogs in a watch, with each turn of the cog pushing the next one along in order to initiate the desired result (the accurate display of the time).

But what if we cannot change the situation we find ourselves in?  Many people use the “I can’t” phrase when advised to make changes that will ultimately benefit them:

“I can’t leave her because…”

“I can’t change my job because…”

“I can’t learn to speak a new language because…”

“I can’t exercise because…”

These sentences are all too familiar, and often to the detriment of the person who’s saying them.  But the difficulty is that when we are no longer able to change the circumstances in which we find ourselves by changing the actual situation, we have no other option than to change ourselves.  And this is the challenge.  For some reason, we believe that it is preferable to attempt to change the people and things around us than to change ourselves, but as Gandhi tells us:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

So can this really be the answer?  If we change ourselves, will the world around us change?  Well, the simple answer is ‘yes’.  If we change, the people and circumstances around us will change also (think of the cogs in the watch).  A reaction will be elicited, and we will then be faced with the challenge of dealing with the reactions, as they may not always be as we expect.  However, knowledge of this possibility will help us to deal with whatever happens next!

However, there is another way to make changes, and this one can be quicker and potentially easier.  Sometimes that’s all we need to do to make changes is to look at things a little differently.  Of course, this will mean stepping away from our pre-conceived ideas of what we are experiencing, but, if that experience is painful and our perception is no longer serving us well, then making an observational change might well be worth the effort.

A friend of mine made an observational adjustment just a few days ago, which will serve well as an illustration.

Being the mother of two teenage children has its challenges, as I’m sure many parents will be able to sympathise with.  On this particular occasion, both teenagers were being surly, but for no apparent reason (sound familiar?).

Jokingly she suggested that it was about time that there was some kind of tv programme similar to ‘Wife Swap’ but for teenagers (note: I think there is, by the way), but as soon as she had said it, she realised that her boys actually weren’t ‘that bad’ at all, and that she could have far worse to deal with.  With this in mind she was able to ignore the surly behaviour and carry on unruffled.

A simple example which shows how just changing our perception slightly can lead to a different reaction and outcome.

Of course, as we are well aware, change is the one thing we can consistently expect!  Learning to accept, adapt to and live with change is a condition of being human, which sometimes we can manage with aplomb.

At other times though, we will feel that we are being oppressed in some way and we will therefore attempt to fight the change and push things back to how they were.  Assessing whether this is a good or bad thing is difficult, but, if we accept that change happens because someone has changed, and, we also accept that we cannot control other people, then attempting to reverse engineer the situation is likely to be frustrating and futile.  Far better to try to understand the reasons for the change and then to find ways to accept and work with the new reality.  In other words, we will need to change, or we will need to change our perception in some way.

This idea is simple, but, like a lot of philosophical ideas, not easy to implement.  Making personal change by changing our behaviours or our perceptions requires persistent action and vigilance.  However, application of the theory becomes easier the more we use it.  In addition, by applying the concept regularly, we are likely to experience a more composed way of life, as change will become far easier for us to deal with.

So over to you!  What do you think about the idea of self-change and perceptions?  Do they really have the power to change our world?  Please leave a comment and let us know what you think!

Photo: GollyGForce