Dealing With Changes

You just came home from your trip abroad last week. You've been doing this for years now, you travel from one country to another either due to your job's calling for vacation. Either way, you enjoy doing this. But never have it occurred to you that your recent trip will be your last trip abroad and what's worse is that for the next two years, you will be confined to your own house and will just work from home. You're a strong independent woman, so you live alone though a Siberian husky living with you. Who would have thought that the coronavirus pandemic will have such a huge impact in the lives of many people and who would've expected such a drastic change in our lives to happen overnight.

Change is the only constant thing in this world. This may be an old passage, but where's the lie in it? Change can happen in the most unexpected time and unexpected way. But sometimes, we already anticipate for something to change ahead of time.

Let's have some other examples of how changes can happen.

A young lad named Eros is living a happy life with his parents. He thought that their family is perfect, his parents sends him to a well known and prestigious school. They can afford all the luxuries a lad could have. Eros could see how much his parents loves and treasure each other and they also never fail to express their love to him. Everything was going on smoothly in Eros' life. Until one day, he received a call from the police. He was trembling in fear, and he couldn't believe the news he just heard. His parents were in an accident, and they were both dead upon arrival at the hospital. Later on, he found out that his parent's business are not doing well, and they filled a bankruptcy a week before the accident. Eros had to deal with the sudden changes. Eros has to face the trauma of what happened to his parents, he can no longer focus on his studies and as a result he had to drop out of school. Everything feels like it just happened in the blink of an eye, but this young lad had to deal with the sudden changes. Thankfully, this is just a story that is a product of my imagination.

Although the first two scenarios showed the bad side of changes, not all changes are bad. There may be something good when we face a change in life.

It may be a transition from a lower position at work to rising to a higher one, a promotion. So we have to deal with changes. It may also be regarding relationship, from a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship to engaged and eventually to a married life. There may be some changes such as from living with your parents and siblings, you now have to live with your spouse. Before, as a single person, you depend on your family. Maybe you just wait for your mom or sibling to give food to you whenever you come home from work, but after getting married, instead of waiting for food to be served to you, you have to cook for you and your spouse first before you can even take a rest.

Perhaps, the economic situation in your own country hinders you from getting a high paying job which force you to work abroad instead. When this happens, you have to deal with changes as well. You have to learn a new language and adapt to the weather, customs and culture of the country where you will be working. You have to deal with new people too.

Yes, like I mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are some changes that we may have already anticipated before it happens but sometimes, there are also some changes that occur which we never have thought about and expected. Usually, such changes are too overwhelming and some people really find it hard to deal with such changes.

But there are some ways to deal with the changes. It can help us not to be overwhelmed and eaten up by anxiety and stress.

Dealing With Changes

Acceptance. Accepting the reality is really important. Don't live in imagination, imagining that you are still living your previous life. Always keep in mind that it is not possible to be able to totally control your situation and circumstances. Accept the fact that change do happen and things will never stay the same forever as it is now. Rather than letting your negative emotions and negative thoughts overwhelm you, accept the reality and face the truth.

Eliminate the negative thoughts and focus on the positive. Avoiding negative thoughts and looking at the brighter side of your situation will help you to and joy and delight in whatever situation you are in. You may feel really sad for leaving your colleagues who eventually became your friends in your previous work, but it may be better for you to work in another company or environment where your real skills will be utilized and will surely help you when it comes to your professional development.

Stop living in the past. Most of the time, people tend to compare what they can previously do to what they can no longer do in the present. They keep thinking about how good their previous life or the previous years are much better than what they are in the present. This way of thinking will only lead to disappointment and will hinder someone to be truly happy and enjoy the current situation.

I also had to deal with changes several times before and who knows, in the following days I will have to deal with another change in my life and I can say that it is not always easy to deal with such changes. Sometimes, it took me months or even years to accept the reality and quit being overwhelmed by the situation, but one thing I can say, if we are able to cope up and deal with every change in our life, our anxiety and stress will be reduced, and it also gives us the opportunity to be happier in life.

Thanks for being here! - @thepandagirl 🐼