9 tips to accept life changes

It’s so hard for us to fit in that everything can and should change! It is hard for us to accept it because any change, no matter how small, implies a resignation, a loss.

But if change and life go hand in hand, if it’s inevitable and desirable, don’t resist. If you assume it, you can choose to be someone new every day.

Let’s accept life’s changes and move on

I am going to tell you nine keys to not get stuck in the doubts of the present and to assume the changes that, inevitably, are presented to us on a day-to-day basis.

1. Flee from losing battles

The first step to face changes with a better predisposition is accept that there is nothing we can do to stop them. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus expressed it in a great image hundreds of years ago: “No one bathes twice in the same river.” When someone returns to the same channel, the waters are not the same, nor is that someone who he was.

Change is inevitable and unstoppable. All attempts to stop, delay or annul it are fruitless. It is a fight that we must abandon (because it is lost) and focus on how to “surf” the wave of change.

2. Inevitable and highly desirable

The utopias of eternity and the immutability of life are not only impossible, but if they were realizable, they would quickly become abhorrent. Can you imagine a life that is absolutely monotonous, eternally the same, and still desirable? I can not. Even under the best of conditions I cannot imagine an immutable existence that would not become, after a certain time, abominable.

Thus, change is not only inevitable but desirable.. It is, perhaps, what makes our human lives not completely vain and different from the life of a mosquito or a groundhog.

3. Changes you don’t detect

Some time ago I differentiated two types of changes. The first, the “change in slope”, is made up of those small transformations that occur gradually and imperceptibly. The wear and tear of things, the growth of children, aging are processes of “sloping change.”

Because they happen so slowly and uninterruptedly, we only become aware of them when something (a photograph, for example) confronts us with the past.

4. When the change is drastic

The step change is one that is generated in a short period of time and more or less abruptly.. In these cases we are fully aware of the changes that have occurred in our lives, being able to clearly recognize and differentiate a before and after. Step changes sometimes happen on schedule and we can anticipate them, but other times, they catch us off guard or, more dramatically, hit us.

A move, a new job, a death, a birth or getting married are all events that generate step changes.

5. Why do you want to resist?

Change is, as we said, inescapable and yet many times we find ourselves precisely trying to do everything possible so that things remain the same, so that nothing changes. We want to delay the change, diminish it or undo it…

And when all this does not work, we still have a last resort: deny it, “nothing has happened here”. What is striking about the case is that all these attitudes frequently appear even in the face of changes that the person had desired or for which they had actively worked. What is it that makes us regress in the face of changes?

6. To change is to lose, accept it

Changes throw us back for a simple reason: all change implies a loss. When something is transformed, it ceases to be in a certain way and begins to be in another: what it was ceases to be. That which has changed has ceased to exist; that is, it has been lost. And losses, of course, hurt.

We can then understand that our resistance to change is nothing more than an attempt not to face the pain of losing something that has been with us for some time in our lives even when we no longer want it.

7. Leaving behind to go forward

This is not to say that there are no positive changes.. It is possible that the gain is greater than the loss, but that is not why we will stop feeling a little pain for the disappearance of the initial situation. Pain is not determined by the outcome of a cost/benefit equation.

All changes are accompanied by the pain of leaving something behind and are followed by a period of “mourning” in which we elaborate our new situation. We must not confuse natural and expected pain at this time and end up thinking that we have made a bad decision. We would be wrong.

8. Pain is no sign

I have met many people who, shortly after having decided to end a relationship, find themselves thinking of going back to that person. They say to themselves, “I’m in so much pain, I must still love him/her.” They confuse the pain of a loss with the desire to continue the unsatisfactory relationship they had.

That desire may exist, but pain is not the measure. The same can happen to us with decisions in any other area of ​​our life, we must not confuse the pain of leaving behind what was at a given moment with regret for what it is today.

9. Be someone new every day

Losing, leaving behind, changing, is painful… But it can also be liberating. This is the wonder of change: that it gives us a universe of possibilities. When asked if people can change, I answer emphatically: of course they can.

It can be difficult, painful, but it is possible. Nothing ties us to the past. We are someone new every day and we can choose, every day. To face the changes that will come and accept them, we must be willing to give up, but in return we will gain a huge range of options and paths.