10 Ways to Embrace Change*
by Katherine Russell Rich
When it came to change, my father had it licked. His motto was simply “Don’t let it happen to you.” He proudly wore the same tie he’d had since college. He moved just three times, ever. But his town and his life were epicenters of low upheaval. For most of us, change is an unavoidable fact, something I (re)discovered when, several years back, I lost my job in a shrinking industry.
Far from ruining my life, that seismic shift gave me the chance to do two things I had always hoped to do: live in India and learn a new language (Hindi). In the process, I discovered a lot about how to survive when head-rattling transformations are thrust upon you. Here are some of the tricks I picked up along the way.
1. Don't just do something; sit there. If you’re facing a massive rescaling of your life, your first impulse will be to go into a whirring spin of activity, which is exactly what I did right after I was fired. I later discovered there’s a lot of value to sitting quietly instead. In the realm of language learning, there’s a stage called the silent period: Adults may try to avoid going through it, but if you take a kid and plop her down in Paris for a spell, she’ll naturally clam up for a few months. When she opens her mouth, her French will have flowered. Making sense of a major change is a lot like that. You need to allow yourself a fallow period before you can blossom.
2. Mother yourself a little. When familiar routines suddenly dissolve, it can seem as if all your supports are gone. For a while after I lost my job, I had the sense that I was in free fall. It’s crucial, while absorbing the shock of the new, to make yourself feel well taken care of. Prepare nutritious meals for the week ahead. If you can spare the cash, have someone come in and clean the house. Yes, you need to take some time for yourself, but don’t let the pizza boxes pile up.
3. Ignore your inner reptile. There’s a part of the human mind that is often referred to as the “lizard brain,” because it existed in even the earliest land animals. The lizard brain is concerned with survival; it likes the tried and true, so it’s likely to pipe up right now, flooding you with adrenaline warnings of “Danger!” as you veer off course. This was a handy function to have when deviating from the familiar path to the watering hole may have led to an encounter with a saber-toothed tiger. But in the modern world it’s like a misfiring car alarm: pointless and annoying.
4. Silence your inner know-it-all, too. When I interviewed the eminent linguist Alton Becker, I asked what makes someone good at languages. It helps not to be too smart, he said, explaining, “Smart people don’t like having their minds changed, and to learn a language, you have to change your mind.” If you’re so smart that you can’t rethink your positions, all your IQ points won’t do you much good when your life is turned upside down. Becker’s advice applies across the board.
5. Seek out new perspectives. Zen practitioners cultivate the “don’t know” mind; they work to assume they don’t know anything and in that way see the world fresh. This is a great way to approach change―as an opportunity to start anew, to consider all possibilities. Ask naive, wide-eyed questions of anyone who is doing anything you might be interested in trying. Listen seriously to arguments you might once have dismissed.
6. Try something new and slightly scary. Why? Because now is the time to explore what it is that you really like. Catch yourself off-guard and see what happens. At a time when I was feeling most stuck, I spontaneously volunteered to get up onstage at an open-mic storytelling evening in New York City. The experience was elating and terrifying and showed me that I wanted to lead a more creative life.
7. Be skeptical of common wisdom. It’s dangerous to live in the aggregate, especially when you’re trying to figure out your next move. One year, everyone knows you need an M.B.A. to succeed at anything. The next, they’re saying that there are no jobs out there anyway, so don’t even try. In my case, everyone but I knew that you can’t learn a language at age 43. But since no one alerted me to that fact, that’s what I set my sights on.
8. Learn to live with uncertainty. When I began learning Hindi, my teacher encouraged me to get out and practice with native speakers in New York. I wound up asking a waiter for love (pyar) when I’d meant to request a cup (pyala). But in that way I inched into a new language. That anxious feeling does not signal that you’re doing something wrong, only that you’re trying something new.
9. Say "really?" a lot. When you start to turn this sudden shift in your life to your advantage, you might shake up a lot of people, especially the ones who aren’t happy with how they’re living. To them, your efforts to move forward may feel like a glaring searchlight that needs to be switched off and fast. To their descriptions of the terrible fates that will surely befall you if you dive headlong into a new life, respond with “Really?” Alternatively, “Oh, yeah?” works, too.
10. Shed your old skin. Discard physical clutter, tired ideas, old routines. Seeing things through another’s eyes can help. I had that chance when the Hindi school I enrolled in asked me to list my daily requirements. I could honestly have said, “For the past 62 days, I’ve eaten pineapple sandwiches for breakfast: toast, butter, canned pineapple (sliced, not crushed). Bedtime: white-noise machine (surf, not rain), four pillows (two hard, two soft).” Instead I wrote, “None.”
It’s only when you have cast off what has been weighing you down that you can finally move on.
*http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/ways-to-embrace-change
Change Your Brain, Change Your Routine, Change Your Life
Learn how to coax your stubborn brain into accepting change to achieve the healthiest you. From The Program by Dr. Kelly Traver and Betty Kelly Sargent
Your Resistant Brain
Although your brain can change, it usually won’t do so without putting up a bit of a fight. That’s because it is set up to resist change, especially sudden change. Your brain operates under the same principle as your body: homeostasis. Just as your body’s physiology works to keep parameters such as calcium, blood sugar, and weight stable, so your brain works hard to continue whatever behavior has become the norm. It seems to say, “Okay, I got you here with this behavior and you’re still alive, so just keep on doing what you’ve been doing and everything will be fine.” Your hypothalamus, in the center of your brain, is the master controller of homeostasis. The hypothalamus controls things like hunger, thirst, and body temperature. It also determines whether your stress response fires and whether reproductive hormones are released. The list of duties performed by your hypothalamus is long. All of the other parts of the brain, especially your emotional limbic system, fight to influence the hypothalamus.
Too rapid a change is interpreted as a stressful event by most brains. Your brain will automatically resist a sudden change in your behavior or routine, and just knowing this can be a big help when you are trying to switch from a not-so-healthful behavior to a healthful one. Studies using functional MRI scans of the brain have evaluated patients who were asked to make a change. If a patient is asked to make a big change, the scan shows activation of the amygdala (a-MIG duh-luh), the seat of the stress response. But if the subject is asked to make a small change, the amygdala remains quiet. People who are ultimately successful in initiating and maintaining major behavioral change usually do it through gradual, step-by-step changes. That’s how The Program works and, actually, why it works so well. I know it isn’t always easy to wait for results that take place gradually. People usually want instant gratification, but for most of us this just isn’t realistic. We need to accept the fact that most people’s brains are not well set up to handle rapid change. For the majority of us, slow and steady change is actually the quickest road to long-lasting results.
If you feel your motivation beginning to slip, it is probably because your brain is saying “Oh no, you don’t! I sense a change here, and I’m not going to let that happen.” This can leave you feeling frustrated and confused. How, you ask yourself, can you so desperately want to make a change one day but then come up with a thousand reasons not to the next? When this happens, remind yourself that this is simply an example of your brain working against you — doing what it thinks it has to do to protect you. You can outsmart it, though. Your brain will start to feel more comfortable with your new actions once you have repeated the new behavior many times, so start repeating the new action over and over again.
Another way to help your brain accept change is to work within a structure. Your brain is very rule-based, so it generally feels more comfortable when the rules are clearly defined. It takes less energy for your brain when you have a clear set of rules to guide it than when you have to make new decisions all along the way. The trick with structure, though, is that if you want to create lasting behavior change, you need to learn how to perform a behavior in all sorts of situations that may be outside the structure you are following. I know this sounds a little complicated, but it’s really not. Let’s look at the example of a weight loss plan that tells you exactly what to eat.
You may be very successful while you are on the diet because you don’t need to make any decisions about what to eat, but after you have lost the weight you have no idea how to eat in a healthful way on your own. The diet didn’t teach you that. Certainly, structure can be very helpful in the beginning, but pay attention to the process within the structure. The process (in this case the original diet) should show you how to create your own rules — rules that you can live with forever.
As you can see, it is not always easy to change the way you behave, but the good news is that you can do it. We know that if you practice a new behavior over and over for a long enough period of time, your brain will eventually decide that this new behavior is the one that needs to be protected and continued. The key words here are “over and over.” You need to repeat the new behavior for long enough to cement it permanently into your brain and therefore into your life.
Conclusion: Although your brain can change, it is generally set up to resist change, especially sudden change. People who are ultimately successful in initiating and maintaining major behavioral changes usually make the changes gradually, one step at a time.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Kelly Traver, M.D., author of The Program: The Brain-Smart Approach to the Healthiest You: The Life-Changing 12-Week Method
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Great blog El... But Don't cry :)
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