Having a baby, losing a job, moving to a new town, getting divorced, starting a business, getting married, becoming the boss, becoming a grandparent—what do all these things have in common?
Change, of course, is the common denominator. The big life changes, like birth and marriage and death, are easily visible yet our lives are all changing minute to minute. (Isn’t that what’s so amazing about being around little kids? You can actually see the changes from day to day, as they grow and learn.) For some reason, human beings resist change—it feels scary and stressful. But change is unavoidable. How you handle change is where choice comes in.
Successfully dealing with change depends on researching and evaluating the challenges and options at hand. Give yourself the gift of time to work on this without distractions.
1) Ask yourself what you want to do.
2) Be as focused as you can with your answers. Write them down!
3) Give careful consideration to all options, no matter how improbable they may seem.
Right now, you’re gathering information.
4) Acknowledge that change is a normal, natural part of life.
Keep coming back to this exercise until you can clearly express the changes you need to make in order to live the life you want. The insights you gain at this point will allow you to move forward. And you’ll develop the confidence that you can do more than simply endure change. You can—really and truly—learn to embrace it.
9 Comments
I have about a million changes going on at one time…how do you deal with such an eruption? Which changes are the most important to focus on? Being financially stable, personal well being, balancing time between work and family. I’m lost! Help!
You’re not lost, Susan. We all need a little help sorting and prioritizing from time to time. Here’s an exercise for you to try. We find it very helpful when life gets a little overwhelming.
Write “Life Priorities” on the top of a piece of paper. Then list the 5 most important components in your life, placing what you value most at the top of your list and working your way down to number 5. Be honest and take your time. Common choices include, but are by no means limited to:
-Family
-Job security
-Money
-Community
-Religion
-Health
-Friends
-Home
-Leisure activities
-Public image
Ordering your priorities by writing them down will give you a valuable tool that will help you make important decisions and move forward. For example, if friends and family are at the top of your priority list, you wouldn’t want a career that requires you to be away from home much of the time. And if making money is your top priority, you wouldn’t choose a job with limited growth potential. Life is a balancing act and it’s important to keep your priorities in mind or the wrong ones might end up on top.
Hi Bob and Mel,
How do you define “success? successful?”
Good question, Katie. The only true definition of success can be found in your heart. If that sounds idealistic, just think about it for a minute. The wonderful thing about success is that you get to decide exactly what it means to you. It has nothing to do with other people’s expectations. If you allow your family or society to define what makes you successful, it’s not really your success at all. It’s theirs.
Personally, we feel most successful when we haven’t compromised our integrity and when we provide something of value to others. To us, being successful means doing the right things as opposed to buying the right things. Sure, there’s financial success to consider as well, and we all have to find the right balance between monetary pleasures and liking who we see when we look in the mirror.
How do you define success? We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Powerful words. Thank you. I’m going to ponder this issue and get back to you.
Hi Bob and Mel,
I have a question for you. I know that you both cherish family and love Jesse with all that you have. My question is this: How were you able to live far away from him? Did he move out of state first, or did you move to Anguilla first?
I ask this because my dear brother and sister moved across the country for their jobs and I am having a terrible time missing them. I now have young children that my siblings don’t see very often and I miss the good times that we could be sharing daily. I am torn between letting them go to pursue their own paths in life, while at the same time missing them tremendously.
Any advice?
By the way, I define my own success as following my heart and having the courage to trust my instincts. I admit when I made a mistake and I change course.
I feel successful when I do what is right for myself and my family.
Katie, you’ve touched on a very personal and emotional subject. When Jesse went away to school, it was his decision. He absolutely hated the local school in our area and needed to be in a different environment. We had never in our wildest dreams envisioned sending him away but after speaking with school counselors and other “experts”, we said he could go. Luckily, his school was only an hour and a half away so we could visit him once, twice or even three times a week, expecially in the beginning. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that we moved to Anguilla.
Looking back, it’s impossible to know if we made the right decisions along the way. Should we have forced Jesse to stick it out in a school that made him miserable so we could all be together more of the time? We will never know the answer. We can tell you, however, that we missed him terribly every single day. We did what we did because we felt it was the best thing for him at the time.
What we do know, is that we did not make any decision quickly or carelessly. We did lots of research and a whole lot of soul-searching.
Fast-forward many, many years. Jesse is now happily married with a new baby girl. They live in Santa Fe which is clearly very far from either Vermont or Anguilla and we miss them more than you can imagine. (We’re headed out there in about two weeks and can’t wait!)
We are hoping that one way or another, we’ll eventually end up living closer to each other at some point in time. But as painful as it is to have them so far away, we know how important it is for them to experience life independently. They have their own dreams and their own image of where they want to live and what they want to do. Right now, if that means living in Santa Fe, they have our unconditional support.
Would we love to see them more often? Absolutely! Would we love to babysit for our granddaughter on a regular basis? You bet! But the truth is that it’s not our decision to make. They know how much we love them and that we’re here for them any time at all.
You asked for advice and ended up with much more information than you probably expected. Our advice, however, is to remember that loving someone often means letting go. Give them the freedom they need can be painful but it is also one of the most important gifts you have to offer.
Thanks for your advice, Bob and Mel. I knew you would have an answer for that because you’ve always thought about family when making life decisions.
Congratulations on the new grand daughter! How wonderful!