Challenging changes & how to deal with them
Hannah
Change is inevitable! Get some tips of how to deal with new challenges and changes!
Happy New Year!
The numbers on your smartphone change.
From 23:59 to 00:00.
From 2022 to 2023.
That’s it isn’t it? In the end, it’s just the numbers that change on New Year’s Eve.
From a very logical point of view, this might be true. But if we’re honest: There’s more to it. Every new year I find myself staring at the fireworks and thinking of all the changes to come in the next twelve months. You can’t tell me you’re not thinking about something like this. Change is inevitable. Especially all the Fizzies who will move in or out one of our THE FIZZ locations might feel the “winds of change”.
As humans, we tend to like things the best if we already know them. In the end, we’re all in love with some habits. So, it isn’t surprising that changes are sometimes very stressful, if not even scary.
You might know that I am not a fan of too many worries and that I like to think that everything will be okay, eventually. But waiting for everything to be perfect without doing anything, as unfortunate as that might be, doesn’t work in most cases. So, here are some tips for you on how to deal with changes the best!
Making plans
Sometimes we all need a little chaos in our lives, just for things to be interesting. But being caught off guard by some spontaneous changes is just overwhelming at some point. Take some time and plan ahead. What is expecting you and what demands the future to be prepared for? It takes away a lot of your fears if you have some sort of plan for what changes you will face. Maybe you can come up with some strategies to handle the challenges of the future.
Break time
Apropos challenges – if important parts of your life seem to shift around you, there’s nothing wrong with taking a break. Change tends to be stressful and as opposed to stressing it’s the best to create comfort. Make some space to escape the daily rush, and do something that’s to your liking maybe in familiar surroundings or with friends and family. You don’t have to master every challenge on the spot.
Time to think
As an awesome addition to your break, take some time to reflect. Think about new situations, about how you feel and how things maybe change further the more you get to know them. You can talk to friends about all that, write some pages in a journal or just… well, think about it. Reflecting is almost like planning ahead but at a different time. It helps you deal with anxiety and prepare for what is to come.
And if you like the thought of taking some time to reflect, you might also start to count blessings. Maybe just one each day. Thinking of all the things we can be thankful for, helps to clear up grey skies a bit – not literally, of course, that would be too good.
Creating habits
“In the end, we’re all in love with some habits.”, do you know who said that? Right. It was me, a few sentences ago. (I think it’s not a bad sentence, so you had to read it again :)) What I actually wanted to say is: Habits help us to get things done, to find some comfort in new surroundings and make it easier to reach goals. You really don’t need a fully planned routine for each day (you might end up with more stress than before) but some small habits can help you to adapt to changes, they promise you a bit of consistency in an unknown routine.
Acceptance
Especially, if we’re happy with the things we have, change feels like an obstacle in our life. Something that forces us to give things up, that tries to bring us out of balance. Sudden changes in unwanted directions might even feel unfair. (I personally think sometimes it’s really justified to hide under a blanket and ignore the world because things feel unfair – but… after a while, we need to come back.)
It’ll always get easier to deal with changes, no matter if wanted or unwanted, if we learn to accept them as a part of our life. We all experience them. Changes are simply unavoidable.
And – No matter how trite that sounds – we’ll always learn from challenges. It isn’t going to get easy to adapt to change and we might not get rid of all our fears but… look how oddly similar these words are. (I promise this is the only bad pun in this text.)
Change can always be a chance – because all you have to do is to swap out the g.
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