Are you someone who easily embraces change, or do you hang on to the old with every stubborn ounce of muscle you possess?  I can see some of you now, walking against the strong winds, umbrellas turned inside out,  fighting  against being blown hither and yon into places you don’t want to go or don’t feel ready for.  After all, the old and familiar are comfortable and the unknown that looms ahead feels odd and maybe even terrifying.  You have already molded your mind and body to fit the old space. Do you remember how it felt when you finally threw away that stretched out pair of shoes and bought a spiffy new pair?  It took time to break them in, to get accustomed to them and to feel right wearing them.  Even though you knew they looked a whole lot better than the old pair and supported your feet better, you were tempted at first to stick them back in the box and to abandon them at the bottom of your closet,  pressing the old ones back into service. 

     On the other hand, think about how the world looked when you finally got that new pair of eyeglasses you needed.  Gradually, without your even realizing it, you had adapted to the blurry version of the world you looked out at every day. When you got your new prescription filled, do you remember how crisp, sharp and amazing everything looked to you?  In this case, the new view is a welcome one, even if it takes a bit of getting used to.

     There are times though when we resist change,  not only because it means tackling unknowns, but because the past represents a time when we were  truly happy or fulfilled at doing something.  Then life came along and threw things  our way that were pretty terrible, or at the very least,  just not what we had hoped for or expected.  When our yesterdays meant sharing life with someone we loved very much and that someone was taken by illness or accident, it is extremely hard to tear off the calendar pages and move on into the future. 

     Similarly, when our yesterdays were spent building a successful career over a period of many years and suddenly, for a variety of reasons, that career is no longer a way we are able to define ourselves, it is truly tough to start making changes and to accept that we have begun a new chapter.  It is hard even when we know deep down that  we must  find a way to make the new chapter meaningful,  though we never before envisioned  it because it all unfolded differently than the way we thought the book was going to be written.

     Sometimes it is a dream we had and lost that binds us to the past. Perhaps we dreamt of  the child or children we would create who would be the most beautiful and the brightest, but who did not happen.  We had to let go of the dream and replace it with another. The new dream might include adopting a child of a different background, or an older child, rather than the soft, cooing infant who visited us in our fantasies.   Or maybe the dream was dancing in front of a spellbound audience or excelling at a sport and the dream never managed to materialize.

     To paraphrase Lee Strasberg, the famous acting teacher, director and founder of the Actors Studio, we must not ”carry a big bag of yesterday into today”.   Often we haven’t the foggiest idea of how to avoid doing that, though we know it is not the healthiest thing for us to do and eventually we must find a way to adapt.

     When life happens in the way it often does and we are forced to be survivors, and to make chicken salad out of scraps and deflated dreams, we all have different ways of gathering  strength while we figure it out.  Some  just take longer than others.  Some of us have to hit rock bottom before we can gradually begin to climb out of the pit we feel we are in.  Some  of us need to martial every possible type of help and support we can muster in order to cope. We must get to a place where the pain of not changing and of being stuck is greater than our fears and what we imagine we will feel if we move on to something new.   This is to be expected when the change is a dramatic one and when the loss was huge for us.   The world has sympathy and understanding, at least for a brief  period and most of the time we are cut some slack until we can begin to function again, at least in the public domain. 

     What about changes that are symbolic and that seem of very small significance to those who don’t walk in our moccasins,  but that nonetheless hit us extremely hard?  When we have been successful at constructing a new life for ourselves despite  past losses and trauma, we are rudely shocked when small decisions we are faced with, or small changes  that present themselves throw us way off-balance. Yet, these are things that can even  plunge us back into a dismal place we did not ever want to go to again.  This is the type of fear or paralysis that can puzzle people who know us and which they often don’t comprehend at all. They may tend to perceive of us as very strong and as having conquered major obstacles and may be disappointed in us.   I think at least a few of you might have some inkling of what I am getting at but I will share an example.

    I had a client who was widowed young, as I was.  In her thirties when her husband died after a long and draining illness, she managed to  be a rock for her three children, for her in-laws, her late husband’s friends who were devastated  (He was a leader in his field and was wel- loved and admired).  She was shocked when she learned how deeply in debt his business had put them.  She developed a plan, took over his business and within a couple of years, was out of debt and doing reasonably well.  More importantly she was beginning to feel good about life again. She felt she had worked on her grief and her anger and had learned how important it was to take care of herself, in addition to caring for everyone else.   Then one day a friend suggested she  remove her wedding ring.  Her friend made some good points.  She thought about it quickly and agreed in principle that it was a good idea. She took the ring  off while they were having lunch and put it in her purse.  However, when she got home that evening, she found herself having a major meltdown and was overwhelmed once again with her recycled grief and even with a feeling that she was betraying her late husband by not wearing her wedding ring.  This continued for weeks. She had renewed intense and prolonged bouts of crying, felt guilty and confused and did not think anyone would understand. In her coaching sessions she was able to look at her situation from several perspectives and to choose one that felt comfortable and made sense to  her regardless of what anyone else in the world might feel. She realized that she still had grieving to do and residual anger she had been unable to pay attention to because she had been too busy earlier with the business and with everybody’s  needs.   She was helped to look at other changes she had successfully made  and at past losses,  to see if she could use the lessons learned to understand and help her through her current situation. Eventually she took off the ring, but only when she was ready and not according to other people’s time lines.

          In the 50′s and 1960′s a group of academic researchers came up with something called “decision science” and concluded that people could be taught to “think like machines” and in doing so,  to eliminate many of the risks made through emotional decision-making.  Fortunately this never caught on and the reason was, in my opinion, that human beings are too complicated and emotions can and do color our outcomes.  I am much more of a “go with your gut” kind of decider, though I like to gather my information first and to be aware of my options and reasons.  Sometimes what my gut is telling me is that I am not ready for something and need to take more time, and maybe that I need to process my pain further before I can move on.  Inaction is a decision too, though if inaction is almost always our choice, we need to examine why we are stuck and find some help getting out of that.

     Are you someone who has prided her/himself on being a strong survivor and yet found your equilibrium thrown way off by an unexpected small change or choice?  Have you felt suddenly paralyzed and puzzled at your own reaction? You can ask yourself some questions to see if they will help you.

1. Do you have enough information or understanding about your choices/options?

2. Why is this proposed action so difficult?

3. Are you fearful of what it might mean, or what might happen as a result?  To yourself? To someone else?

4. Are you feeling guilty about something or do you have some unfinished emotional business you need to take care of first?

5. Is someone prompting you to make this choice, or is it something that has come from within you?

6. Why is now the absolute right time for this to happen? Can it wait?

7. What is to be gained by waiting?  What will be lost by delaying the decision?

8. Is there anyone objective you can bounce this off who won’t make judgments?

9. What can you learn from past mistakes?  Past successes?

10. If you are not ready to decide or change now, what might a reasonable time frame be that you are willing to commit to for taking the first step?

11. What is that first step or is this something that truly needs to be done all at once?

12. Who in your life can help you by holding you accountable when you do decide to do something, if this will help you to stick to your own choice or plan?