Change Can Be Uncomfortable

How do you deal with change? It can come in many different ways. Some of us, when change happens, especially if it’s unexpected, we get angry about it. Because, we don’t like change. We like things to stay on an even keel, we like the familiarity of things not changing at all. Some of us say that the older we get the harder change becomes because we are stuck in our ways. Well, that’s pretty true for a lot of us, because it gets uncomfortable. And, we don’t like to feel uncomfortable.

Others of us, we might get startled, feel really uneasy. Uncertainty can come up for us because it’s new territory to navigate and change means things are different. The need for predictability can come up. We get comfortable with familiarity. We think we already know things then; we don’t have to learn them all over again.

Maybe you get scared. It may come up in the form of feeling scared you won’t succeed, or that you’ll get it wrong. I know that people like me, we don’t like to get it wrong. We want to know that we are going to get it right! Or we get worried that things are never going to feel easy again.

Sometimes change can feel really drastic. It can feel like things go from black to white. Or maybe it went from black and white to wild color! Again, we are not clear on what the path is now.

But, you know, the truth is that change is happening all the time. The problem is that we might not be noticing it. Change happens every moment of every day and we can notice it when we take the time to have eyes to see it.

When we live with a sense of unawareness it can feel like change just sneaks up on us. This can happen in many different ways, for me most recently it happened by getting to have a new granddaughter. Because my daughter, who just had this baby, is the same age that I was when I first had a baby girl. That just seems like it was only a blink of an eye ago, and now I have a new granddaughter.

This makes a lot of changes, changes that I did notice the first time becoming a mother of a daughter. Now there are new changes happening as I’m the mother of a daughter, who has a new daughter. One of the gifts that I’m receiving from these changes, is I’m noticing the patterns with more clarity and compassionate understanding.

It is possible to begin to notice our reactions to changes and be able to be in response, to have choice. Rather than completing our original reaction, we can slow down and begin to respond from our heart energy. We can then even begin to welcome the unexpected and be comfortable with the unknown.

How do you do this? Well, for me it’s been by developing presence, and cultivating curiosity, which helps to grow my awareness. It’s possible to learn to welcome our emotions and receive the information that they hold for us. They bring messages to us when we learn how to listen.