Changing direction can feel uncomfortable!
Each season brings new perspectives and new opportunities to make changes and evaluate the current status. Deciding to tweak the journey to stay dynamic, flexible, and growing is a choice. Brought about by increased awareness. However, changing direction can feel uncomfortable!
“When you change the way, you look at things.
The things you look at change”
– Wayne Dyer
Many years ago, I was living a comfortable life. Married, building a career whilst studying, supporting the kids through school, all while taking our extended family for granted. It was a busy time. At times it felt like we were just hanging on as the merry go round went furiously round and round. Stuck in a routine that kept us comfortable.
So, what changed? One winter day, I received a phone call just after breakfast from my sister. She broke the news to me that she was sick, with 12 months to live. What a shock this news was. I was totally unprepared. However later I realised that it was a defining moment in my life.
It was at the end of winter the following year, as spring was emerging when we buried my sister. I could feel a change in the air but was not sure what it meant. Somehow, I knew life was going to be different from this minute on. My life was about to change in ways I could not have imagined!
Changing direction can feel uncomfortable! Over the next few months my life became chaotic. Career change, job change, family dynamics all changed as well as my values. What had felt important before, no longer seemed to matter. I felt challenged on all facets of my life and career and feeling uncomfortable quickly became the norm. Struggling through life for a while, manoeuvring through the storm of change and emotions that came with it. It took a while for that chaos to settle and clarity to emerge.
On reflection I could see that during that fateful springtime, when we buried my sister, the chaos that ensued because of this event pushed me out of my comfort zone. Feeling this discomfort and leaning into it was challenging. However, in a way it strengthened my resilience and I found myself being faced with opportunities that I just leaped right into.
Like many of us, we get caught up with life, career, and family. Not enough time to appreciate the important things in life. Our priorities get all out of whack! We become out of balance and dis-ease sets in. Quite often we are unaware of this for a while. It can be an insidious process.
So, what is the point? Well, it is often difficult to see the changes that we need to make on our life journey when we are experiencing the chaos that life can bring to us. I believe that we are all more alike than different and we are all called upon to change direction as we go through life. So how do we get comfortable with being uncomfortable?
Here are my three tips that may help:
- Develop and attitude of gratitude, find the simple things in your life to be grateful for and most of all be kind to yourself
- Review your vision board and update it to reflect your current situation
- Put on some calm, relaxing music as you Identify your current fear and sit with it, then do some deep belly breathing for a couple of minutes and with each breath you exhale let go of a piece of the fear. Repeat this as often as you feel that you need to
Remember, changing direction can feel uncomfortable! When we find ourselves in an uncomfortable situation, we can turn this to our advantage, lean into it and use this energy to assist us to tweak our journey and goals. The lighter our energy becomes, the more agile and flexible we are, change and growth occur, mindset shifts, and we feel happier with increased momentum.