Learning To Deal With The Fear Of Change

Another little pearl of wisdom that I have been hearing a lot lately is that the fear of change causes us great suffering. Why? Because things are changing all the time, nothing ever stays the same so unless you learn to embrace change you will always be suffering.

This Too Shall Pass

We often hear those words when going through some kind of crisis. It can be very helpful to remember that nothing lasts so no matter what kind of crisis you may be going through, it cannot endure forever. Of course, this also applies to the ‘good stuff’ too and that is where people get themselves into a bit of a pickle.

Looking at my own life, I can see that I am somebody who resists change. I like to get settled, to get myself into a nice routine, surround myself with the familiar and just sit in my little bubble-wrapped comfort zone. The problem is that as soon as I start to get everything into place just as I want it, something will happen to upset my nice balance - something changes.

This has been going on for years and it’s only literally been in the last few months that I finally figured out that it is always going to be like that!

Everything Operates In Phases

In my last post I talked about how everything in our life expands and contracts, even life itself. As we go through life things change around us. For those in a typical western society it might start with school then perhaps some higher education, getting a job, getting married, having children, mid life (whatever that is!), retirement and so on.

When we fear the new phase it causes us pain. In many cases there’s even a name for this fear such as the “mid-life crisis”! The problem is that the ever changing phases of our life are inevitable. Of course some changes are more subtle than others. For example our bodies are changing all the time so as the days go by we might notice the odd new wrinkle or grey hair but we usually don’t wake up one day and look 20 years older.

Other changes can be a major culture shock - a new job, a child, a relocation, the breakdown of a relationship, a death etc. These are of course much more difficult to deal with but deal with them we must because absolutely everything must come to an end at some point in time.

Everything is Temporary

After the breakup of my last relationship I was so traumatised that I was desperate to prevent myself from ever having to go through that experience again. I figured that in my next relationship I would have to make sure we stayed together forever! But of course it didn’t take me long to figure out how absurd that was!

To start with, no matter how suited two people can be, things can change. Even if I did find somebody who would be perfect for the next 40 odd years, she might get run over by a bus! Even if we made it to our old age, there would be an extremely high possibility of one of us dying before the other.

Nothing in this world can last forever! No life form, no relationship, no job, no structure, no social status - nothing!

There are some things that do indeed last a very long time but there is still change. Jobs change, people change, friendships change, political parties change, social establishments change, holiday resorts change. Everything, no matter how large or small goes through a natural process of change throughout its existence.

Attachment To Temporary Entities Is a Recipe For Pain

A subject I have been talking about in recent posts is that when we become strongly attached to something, we inevitably suffer when we lose it and so when we couple that with the knowledge that everything in this material world is temporary that’s a pretty gloomy way of looking at things!

Or is it? I’ve been reading some books on happiness and one of the principles seems to be that true happiness needs to be found inside of ourselves and now I can see clearly why that is. If our happiness depends on all those temporary things then we will eventually lose something and suffer as a result. If we can learn to experience a deep sense of inner happiness no matter what goes on around us then we will always be happy.

But HOW do we do that?

That is what I have been working on over the last couple of months. What I have found is that knowing that things will change, knowing that people will move in and out of my life, knowing that I get a little older each day has lead me to a certain sense of acceptance. I can just surrender now because I can’t control all that stuff! I know that life will throw me more curve balls somewhere along the line and when it happens I’ll deal with it then.

In the meantime I have stopped worrying about all the stuff I have no control over and just work on what I can control.

Stumble it!