Focus on things you can change - and don’t become anxious for the ones you can’t
Now more than ever, we are in a dynamic world of constant movement and change around us. We constantly experience things changing in our jobs, our homes as well as our personal circumstances. Many of us feel anxious when it comes to change, however, we should never forget that change also always entails opportunities for something new to start. The new year of 2023 has just started, and while it will be potentially a year of economic uncertainty to start with, it will surely hold big and small opportunities for each of us. For the new year, many of us make plans or even new years resolutions. The often illusion here is for change to be something that we can plan or somehow control. The truth is, we very often cannot, but we can learn to better live with a constantly changing environment around us and therefore build resilience and coping mechanisms.
To better cope with change, distinguish between two types, change that we can influence and change that we cannot. As an example, new year’s resolutions such as starting to do exercise twice a week, clearly are positive changes that we have a direct influence on to implement those desired changes and therefore achieve our long terms goals of getting fit or loosing weight. Very often, people underestimate how much change they are faced with, they can directly or at least indirectly influence. To deliver on changes we can influence it is very helpful to regularly reflect, consciously become aware of the change at hand and ideally concluding and a bit of a plan on how we want to cope with the change we are facing. Here, it is also very important to understand that this is an active process. The better our plan to cope and implement change, the more successful the outcome for us.
However, there is also on the other hand the type of change we cannot influence that just sometimes hits us and very often seems to be rather negative. Again, here, it is very important not to become overly anxious with things that are out of our control. As an example, change we cannot influence often involve decisions made by our managers or people we work with. Two things are of fundamental importance here. Once, to always loud and clear say what we want, be authentic and communicate our anxiety as best as we can in the appropriate way. This way, we sometimes indirectly can influence decision and have nothing to blame ourselves for should change come our way impacting us in some way or another. The other important factor is to not become overly anxious on what bit of negative change might just be around the corners. We need to move from a what if mindset here to a mindset that delas with the facts and change at hand in a rational way once it occurs. Otherwise, the more we think about what changes could potentially happen in the future that we have no influence at all on, the more anxious we get which is not healthy for mental wellbeing. With factors we cannot influence, live in the hear and now and deal with them once they occur one at a time. Once they happen, again, important to reflect, understand exactly what they mean for us and develop a plan on how to best respond and evaluate potential consequences those changes must make decisions how to cope in a relational and thoughtful way. This way, we are taking back a little bit of control on how to deal with something we cannot control in the first place.
To conclude, change is all around us and we need to build resilience and get better in dealing with it to live a happy and healthy live. While we can control some changes around us, other we cannot, and they just happen to us. With those however, it is important to only deal with them once they happen, rather than anxiously anticipating things we cannot influence or be sure of. As a second step then, it is good to carefully evaluate the change in situation and design a plan to respond, which is something we luckily always can actively choose.
