Are you ready to shift the way you respond to change?

Change can feel so scary, because it’s the unknown and your brain’s survival mechanism sees that as danger. It feels scary so rather than making the moves you want, you stay stuck in what you know, what is comfortable. Even if it isn’t what is right.

You will want to resist change

As humans are creatures of habit, right? We like to have familiarity, we like to know what’s coming and that feels good to our nervous system. So the first thing we need to understand is when change occurs, whether it’s in your business, relationships, job, life, whatever change is happening, it is initially going to feel scary and because it feels scary, it means you are going to want to resist it.

If we take it back to the basics of how your brain works, your brain and your body are always looking to protect you. There’s a constant radar in your brain. The amygdala, the part of the brain that handles the stress response, is always scanning your environment for any potential danger. Whilst change isn’t necessarily dangerous, that part of your brain is very primitive. So it is still stuck in caveman days and back then change might have been going hunting on a different route or having to set up your village in a different area and therefore there was no familiarity.

A new environment meant you didn’t know where the saber’s tooth tigers were, you didn’t know where that next bit of attack was coming from, maybe you didn’t know the bushes and the fruits and the berries that were growing, are they safe, are they poisonous?

So it’s all about survival.

What happens when you think about change? It fires the stress response and hormones like adrenaline and cortisol start to flood the body. You may feel panicked, anxious, a sense of dread. You interpret that as meaning this change isn’t good for me so therefore I’m going to resist it because this doesn’t feel comfortable. Even though where you are right now doesn’t feel comfortable, that unknown feels scarier.

It’s time to change perspective

Rather than avoiding change, because let’s be real it’s a part of life, it’s about shifting your perspective on what change means. If you believe change is scary, change means things can go wrong, change is going to be bad and it’s going out into a big, bad, scary, unknown world, then it’s very unlikely you’re ever going to make that change.

It will feel almost impossible to be confident enough to take that first step. You want to know the exact steps but in essence it’s only ever about knowing that first one and trusting the others will follow.

Your brain likes to look at the what if’s and the worst case scenarios, but more often than not, they never, ever materialize. So really being able to recognize your thoughts for what they are. To know that they’re not true and to be able to pull yourself away from them is a huge big step in cutting off that resistance to change and allowing yourself to lean into it and rewriting the story around what it means to be doing something different.

What if you saw it as an opportunity instead? What if you thought about all the getting excited about what it could look like, what it could bring in, all of the amazing things that it can open up? Instead of allowing your mind to take over and give you all the reasons why you shouldn’t do anything differently, I want to invite you to notice the initial feeling when you think about the change. Is it relief, excitement, confidence? That is the truth of the direction you want to take and what you need to keep coming back to.

If you believed it would all work out, how would you feel about taking the leap?

The more you resist it, the harder it’s ever going to be to change any area of your life. Your nervous system will keep hold of the idea and the memory that change is bad, change isn’t good. Your comfort zone can’t stretch if you never challenge it.

I invite you to think about where you’re putting the shoulds and the pressures on your life and think about what is it you really want and how can you embrace that?

How can you be excited about making that change rather than be fearful of it?