What is change?
There’s been quite a few notable events in the UK over the last week – The Queen’s passing, Liz Truss as the new Prime Minister, and most dramatically of all, Thomas Tuchel being sacked as Chelsea Manager.
I joke with the last one (well, somewhat), but sometimes it can feel like a lot of things are changing. The idea of change can quickly feel overwhelming, as if we are being washed up in a tidal wave of uncertainty and the comfort blanket of normality is being tugged from our clenched fists.
What we don’t often think about is how every day our cells are renewing themselves, and we’re experiencing a new rotation on the earth each and every day. The way we experience the world will always be unique based upon the exact moment we are happening to see it. So it’s not that things are necessarily changing more, it’s that I’m spending more time focussing on the change.
The more I’ve focussed on the idea that everything is changing the more jaded I feel. The human mind looks for patterns to explain why I feel the way I’m feeling – if I feel a sense of insecurity, I look for a reason. So I can then explain to myself that it’s because of change. My brain then looks for all sorts of change (including a new Chelsea manager!) which helps explain this to myself. This is the weird and wonderful way our brains work.
If we look for change, we can find it everywhere. I changed what I had for my breakfast this morning. I travelled, so was in a different bed yesterday. I had a different set of meetings and responsibilities this week. I can use these changes as a reason that everything feels insecure.
But when examining this thought process, I can reflect that I’ve had many weeks before where I’ve been doing lots of different things without feeling insecure by change. Two weeks ago, I met a bunch of people, did some writing and did some additional yoga classes I’d never done before. I didn’t go on about how much my life was changing then.
So perhaps it’s not really the change that is making me feel jaded. Perhaps instead it’s how much I’m thinking about how everything is changing. In reality, not much has physically changed in my life. I’m still doing pretty much the same thing – sitting in front of the computer, writing emails, reading, watching old youtube videos and sometimes writing this blog. It doesn’t seem all that different when I put it like that.
So I’d prefer to reframe this idea of scary ‘change’ as life slowly shifting like waves in the sea crashing on the beach. The waves never truly stop, but sometimes can go faster. Even when there’s a storm, ultimately the water and the beach are still there, come what may. We can choose to try and stop a storm from coming, or accept that the next day we will have sunshine anyway.
When I accept life as a beautiful, ever shifting enigma, I can let go and simply enjoy life. I don’t need to get caught up in my own thoughts around insecurity.
From this space, I have the freedom to do what I want.
How do you view change?