Why Do We Find Dealing With Change So Difficult

Our world is every changing, never static, always on the move. Change is an important part of our growth and evolution into a better planet and a better race. But change for some can be stressful and unwanted. So why do we find dealing with change so difficult?

It really matters not what type of change we are talking about. Change at home, at work, in the neighborhood, or on the planet. Change is change. Sometimes change is good, effective, and beneficial while other times it may not be beneficial at all but still unavoidable.

The human race actually survives under contradictory terms. We say that stability is required to perform well and for a person to feel secure both in our home and work environment. But then we also say that change is good and that no change leads to complacency, stagnation, and uncreative thinking. So how does one balance these two contradictory human objectives?

You need to start by examining your belief system, you patterns in life, your good and bad habits. Understand how your life currently functions and what type of change would be beneficial to you, your family, or your overall environment.

For example let us say you are a 50 year old male that is around 50 pounds overweight and suffering from high blood pressure. Analyze what change would be good for you and the benefit of your family. A change in diet combined with exercise could be a good change that causes you to loose the excess weight and control your high blood pressure making you a healthier individual.

Sometimes we can predict or even control change but usually it is far beyond our immediate environment and we have not control over it. Thus the only thing you can do is learn to be better equipped to deal with so that you have a successful outcome.

We commonly place limitations on ourselves that hold us back and make it difficult for us to be receptive to change. Many times we do not even realize we have placed these limitations upon ourselves. But once you begin to understand how patterns develop you can alter them and effectively handle change.

Some change is easy to adapt to while other change can be more difficult, and some change is just impossible to adapt to.

Straightforward change is easy to adapt to. This includes changing your hair style, changing your house or your car. Straightforward change may affect you on a daily level but it will not affect you at a fundamental level.

You might decide to change something you already to a new way. Perhaps the trail you take to jog, the gym you attend, or the school you send your children. These types of changes are relatively straightforward and easy to deal with because you yourself have initiated them and already have a solution or effective change.

Then there are the things you know you need to change but can either not see or the solution or don’t want to. For example you need to loose 30 pounds or you need to quit smoking. You are conscious of the need for change but you have not yet decided to implement the needed change. This is a non stressful situation as well as you are in control of the change and when it occurs.

The following two types of change are the hardest to deal with. Having to change something you know you absolutely cannot change. This type of change asks us to change our view, look at the world in a new way, or change something we believe in. This type of change can cause us to feel insecure or unsure. We may not know what we should do as we don’t have a predictable pattern to follow. We are unsure that we can handle this change as it affects what we believe.

The last type of change is imposed on you and you have no control over it. You may feel used, cheated, or disempowered. The initiators of this type of change will often blame it on a changing market or economy and take little responsibility for the change while the recipient is left with no control over the change that directly affects them.

But remember there are also people that love change. In fact they thrive on it. They become bored if they stay at the same job too long or live in the same house too long. They like to shake things up and sometimes they’ll create change just because they feel the urge.

Once you understand why change can be so hard you will be better equipped to deal with change. For most of us we are much more comfortable with routine than with change so once we’ve established a pattern our left brain will happily march along to the same old beat day in and day out.

Since patterns are set up very quickly it’s only logical that the brain resist changing these patterns. However we can retrain our brain to accept the new pattern which means we’ve adapted and accepted the change.

There are some things however that we may be very difficult to change and those are changes that affect our belief system. For example if your self esteem is low your belief system for that pattern is much stronger than the evidence of change.

So if for years you’ve heard that you are stupid or that you can’t do anything right that becomes your belief system. So when suddenly you are told you are a whiz kid that you can excel you cannot accept that change because it goes against your entire life’s belief system.

You must learn to recognize your core beliefs that may in fact not be true and thus train yourself and your brain to accept that the change is a positive experience for the betterment of oneself.

Whether we like it or not change is part of our lives. So things we can control while others we cannot so we train ourselves to look for the positive in change and the opportunities it brings we will find dealing with change far less stressful.

Deon Melchior is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit ArticleClick.com. Article Click is a free content article directory. This means that as a publisher you may reprint the articles that are included in our site, as long as the article is unedited and the author box is included with it's live hyperlinks.