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I can’t believe one day I will be writing on this topic. My childhood friends would know why I am saying this. Yes! A lot had “changed”; it was inevitable like “The change”.

Summer of 1997, after my grandma’s demise, my parents told me that they would want my school closer to home. Thus, decided to change my school. The news came as a shock to me. Dear me! I was not ready for this sudden “change”. I was just a kid; my whole life was shaken. All I could think of was why it was happening to me! First, Grandma was not in my life anymore, and now this! I was going to miss all my friends, and most of all, my elder sister who was not moving to the new school with me. I was despondent, devastated. All I could wish for was that somehow my parents would reverse their decision. I was sure that I was going to have a terrible time in the new school. Various bad feelings were filling up my brain such as I would never be able to make new friends, my new teachers would be hard on me, I would be having a hard time adjusting to the new school, and whatnot. If I remember clearly, that was not the best summer break I had. I used to be the student who would wait for the breaks to be over soon and join back the school. But that year, I wanted the calendar to show the month of June forever.

Before joining my new school in July, I remember having countless talks, and discussions with my father. Every single time, for each of my perturbing questions, my father used to come up with one of his childhood stories that enthralled me and took my worries away. I might have asked him the same questions repeatedly a couple of times, but my father used to answer them sagaciously every single time.  I must agree, I was a bit nervous for a couple of days until I fully adjusted to the new environment. But you know what, having those discussions with my father and listening to his life stories surely helped me and prepared me to sail my boat and eased up the transition.

That was a short childhood story of mine. What I learn from this is that the more we hold on to something, the more difficult we find ourselves to move on. It was difficult for me to accept “the change” Why? because I was holding on to – my sister, friends, teachers, and comfortable school setting. My attachment to those was blocking me from visualizing the hidden good in “the change”. Something which is most dear to us; gives comfort to us; gives “happiness” to us, we get “attached” to those. Once we get attached, we would like to hold on to those and we never want to let those go.

We all came from so far. The journey from single-cell organisms to complex multi-cellular human species didn’t happen over a day. It took billions of years and still is happening. According to the evolution theory, species that could “adapt” to their environment are more likely to survive and pass their traits to their offspring. Individuals with less adaptive traits less frequently survive passing them on. But why are we talking about biology and genetics, right?

The very thing from which we, the human species, the complex creatures, came and survived; often are afraid of the same- “the change”.

I wonder why a few of us are afraid of “the change”?

Let’s talk about this a little bit.

We are blessed with a complex brain structure. The human brain is so far, the most complex known brain in the universe. We can process multiple things at the same time, we can have thousands of thoughts in a day. It is a central processor, without this we could not breathe, play, work, walk, talk, see, remember, or function at all. The brain is capable of immense power.

With all these marvelous capabilities, our brain also comes with resistance to changes. According to neuroscience, we fear new things because of the uncertainty it brings along with them. Our brains got wired and trained to work in familiarities and certainties. When we are born, our brains are fresh and adaptable to perceive new things, new skills, and new experiences. We learn every day from our actions, behaviors, and surroundings. We repeatedly process the ones that are required for good behavior and trimmed out the bad ones. Every skill, every learning, behavior, etc. makes several neural patterns and pathways. The more frequently and consistently we work on them the stronger connection we develop. Eventually, our brain learns what works and what doesn’t. Which is good, for a lot of things. For example, we don’t need to keep learning good behaviors, values, and good habits again and again. Once those are well wired to us, it comes out naturally, like retrieving from a computer’s cache memory. But on the other side, this very feature of the brain also keeps us from accepting the change.

One big barrier to accepting the changes is denying the impermanence of life.  We often have a difficult time moving on. Moving on from the job, personal loss, relationship, home setting, even from a short summer break, or just a week-long vacation! It is a hard time coming back into the present and accepting “the change”. Our mind keeps on looking into past events, searching for happiness in the good olden days. Reminiscing about the olden days is a wonderful thing to do to cherish the good old memories but not at the cost of living happily in the present.

Life is a beautiful book, once we finish a chapter, we need to move on to the next. We can always revisit the previous chapter, but we must write the next one. According to the article published in psychologytoday, accepting impermanence can lead to the existence, and appreciation of being present.

So, what are a few ways to deal with the changes? There are certain ways to accept and adjust to the change:

1. Acceptance: One of the major issues in dealing with the change is that we don’t want to accept “the change”. Our mind is kept overthinking and analyzing why certain things happened to us that lead to this “change”. It would want to remain in the past. To move on, it’s quite important to accept and face change. We need to learn that it is important to let go. Changes are a vital part of life and whatever is happening to us is meant to happen. The earlier we accept the inevitability, the sooner we would embrace happiness.
2. Talk about it:  We can analyze ourselves, talk about it and discuss with our friends and family what would happen if the change occurred. Questions can help us determine if the change is worth worrying about.
3. Be positive: It’s easy to think that changes are going to be bad for us, as we learned above that the brain wants us to work in familiarities and certainties. We need to work beyond this and look at the positive side.
4. Opportunity to grow: Try to take this as a challenge and remind us that we are stronger than this and that whatever is happening is happening for the good.
5. Manage stress by exercising and meditation.

Well my friends, finally, this article wouldn’t be complete without me talking about one of my favorite books of all time i.e. “Who moved my cheese?” by Spencer Johnson, M.D. As much as I like its hilarious title, its content inspires me to the deep core. There are 4 characters in this book, who encountered unexpected changes along the way. The author, in his metaphoric way, describes how those characters deal with those changes. One of my learnings from this book is that we often are afraid of change thinking that it is going to be worse, but change is never as bad as what we imagine. The fear we picture in our minds is much worse than reality.

“If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward” –Martin Luther King Jr.

Change is inevitable!

Thanks

Mridulika

References:

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/how-train-your-brain-accept-change-according-neuroscience-ncna934011
2. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-second-noble-truth/201301/accept-impermanence-be-happier#:~:text=Accepting%20impermanence%20can%20lead%20to%20an%20existence%20with,the%20same%20or%20last%20beyond%20what%20it%20did.