Have you heard the saying, “September is the new January”? If you have school age kids, you get this. With children returning to school in a few weeks it feels like a new year is starting. There are so many changes…new school, new grade, new friends and new routines. You would think that after years of doing this during our childhood, we would be familiar with change and not resist it. Yet many still need to learn to see the positive side of change.
Change continues to happen throughout our lives. As I help my children start their new school year, I’m thinking about all the change we go through in life and how I feel about it. We change houses, jobs, relationships, ages, routines and seasons. We even change our identity as we change from child to adult to spouse and to parent.
Change is the only constant in life.
Heraclitus
The only thing constant about change is that it will come. Change is inevitable and it is up to us to decide how we handle the change. Will we embrace it or resist it? My natural instinct is to be resistant to change. I am someone who likes routine and I’m not fond of surprises. I like things planned and predictable. So how, then, can I learn to embrace change? The answer is to look at the positive side of change and see the good that can come from it.
The positive side of change
There are many benefits to change. While not all change is welcome or planned in our lives, we can still benefit from change if we learn to look at the positive side. Here are just 3 of the positive effects of change (click here to read more):
1. Change helps us grow
One thing that change will often do is push us out of our comfort zone. Some people love to be pushed and to try new things, but others (like me) find a lot of “comfort” in our comfort zone. We would rather not leave our safe space. However, when we have to adapt to something new, we can experience personal and professional growth. We often learn strengths and abilities we didn’t know we had.
2. Change makes us adaptable
When we meet change with a positive attitude, we learn to let go of our set ways and become flexible. We learn to adapt to new people, new environments, new roles and new situations. In the long run, being flexible leads to more happiness and less stress.
3. Change brings opportunities
Every change and every alteration, big and small, brings opportunities to our lives. When change comes we have the opportunity to learn something new (more on the benefits of learning something new here), become someone new or feel something new. We have the opportunity to set goals for a new chapter of our lives. If we learn to anticipate these opportunities and look for them in the midst of change, we can turn the situation into something positive.
Control your perspective on change
Expect change
As years go by I get less and less resistant to change. I’ve learned that change will always come, sometimes welcome and sought after and other times forced upon me, but always a reality. When I change my attitude and expect change, I am less thrown off by it.
Build upon past experiences
When I look back on my experiences and see the positive effects of changes in my life, it builds confidence in me. I use past transitions as templates and learning experiences. The more I go though and view as a learning experience, the more confident I become in my ability to handle whatever life throws at me.
Resist fear
Often we don’t know how we will be changed or how we will feel on the other side of transitions and we become fearful of change. That fear can keep us from experiencing new things and growing as a person. We should try to resist this fear of the unknown and take comfort in the fact that it is a part of life and part of moving forward.
As I watch my children get ready for a new year at school, I want to give them this advice: embrace all the change. Instead of focusing on all that is different and resisting the changes, look for the positive. New classmates brings new opportunities for friendships and new teachers bring variety and different styles of learning. A grade older means different responsibilities and ways to grow. And as I send them off I will think about what the new school year means for me and I, too, will try to embrace change.
Challenge for this week:
If you resist change, try these three steps to help you embrace it.
First, anticipate changes that might be coming in the next 6 months to 1 year of your life. Prepare for the possibilities by acknowledging that they might happen and consider how you might react.
Second, think back to times in your life when you’ve gone through significant change. Remember how you handled it. Is there anything you learned from that and want to do differently next time? Can you identify any positive things that happened as a result of that change?
Finally, use the anticipation of change and past experience to remove fear. Change your perspective to try and view the positive side of change.