Change is inevitable. There is not one person on the planet who won’t experience it. Your body will change, the people around you will change, the weather will change, and ideas will change. Change is not always easy, but it can always be good. It will depend on what you do with it when it comes your way.

There are several options when change comes marching into your life. You can deny it, fight it, or embrace it. Which option you choose will depend on your perception of the outcome and the discomfort you fear it will cause you.

Sometimes change is awesome, such as the birth of a healthy baby or a job promotion. Other times, change is dark and difficult. You’re tired, your child rebels, or the world shuts down because of a pandemic. In any case, it’s important to embrace change.

What does it mean to embrace change?

Embracing change is facing the obvious, staring it right in the face, and holding out your arms to take a hold of it.

When faced with change, we can make up neat little stories which makes any uncomfortable reality go away. It’s easy to put on rose-colored glasses, but this isn’t exactly embracing it.

Looking at change clearly will help. See it for what it is.

When faced with uncertainty about your health, take the appropriate steps to investigate what is going on
If a relationship is changing, accept it and determine how you want to go forward
When a new boss takes over your department, be open to new ideas and processes

Be careful not to make the change worse in your mind than it is simply as a reaction to fear. Stay in the moment.

Accept that change will take you away from the familiar and towards the unfamiliar. You must learn to be OK with that.

Open up your arms (they may need to be pried) and give change a hug.

why is embracing change a good habit?

We would like change to happen easily and smoothly. But by its very nature, the process of change will be bumpy, nonlinear, and include some failure. No one will go through their life without changes being thrust upon them. What is not inevitable is the process.

Embracing change will make your life easier.

Let’s go back to the ways to handle change. You can deny it, fight it, or embrace it. When you deny the clear signs of change and put your head in the sand, you will get left behind. The change will happen anyway and, although it can be troubling, ignoring it will not make the process easier.

Like a child with his fingers in his ears shouting lalalala, . . . denying the early signs will leave you flat footed.

Some deny change when their relationships begin to crumble. But trying to fix it after a lot of pain has happened causes undue suffering.
Some deny change when their parents age and lose their capabilities. Enabling parents to stay in unsafe living conditions can happen when children deny the failing abilities of their parents and cling to the “mom and dad” who, through a child’s eyes, were capable of anything. Ignoring this change can be extremely difficult for the aging person.
And many businesses deny change is happening in their marketplace, with their staff, or in culture. This leads to an inevitable reduction in profit.

Some people choose to fight the process of change. They dislike the idea of learning new things, changing behaviors, or seeing things in a new way. Even if the current process is dysfunctional, they prefer it because at least they know what to expect! As if to hold back the tide, these people do their best to stop the flow of change. Fighting it causes stress on everyone. Don’t fight it just because you don’t want to deal with the uncertainty of it. Embracing change is a good habit because fighting it just causes undue struggle.

Embracing change will make your life easier.

how do you get started?

Here are some ways you can learn to embrace change in your own life.

Rearrange your furniture
Take a different way to work
Change your morning routine
Make new friends. (You don’t need to abandon your current friends but be aware that you may have outgrown them)
Try a new hobby
Change your hair style
Try a new food
Travel
Go back to school
Listen to a new genre of music

Change is going to come up in everyone’s lifetime. Embracing it will be easier than denying it or fighting it. Be open to new opportunities that you could not have imagined.