Navigating Change

The one thing we can always count on is change, so how can you navigate it better.

As we move through life, change is the one thing around the corner. Whether the condition is changing for the better or not, we tend to resist it. We seek comfort, routine, and safety.

We’ve built routines in our day and stay in our comfort zone, and we dread when a surprise happens because it throws us off. When we drive to work, school, or a family member or friend’s house, we take the same route even though many paths will lead to our destination.

Seek new experiences for the sake of growth

Recently I noticed that my husband and I were sitting in the same seats every week when attending Sunday service. Most everyone is doing the same thing, so I decided to sit and see things from a different perspective each week. I find this new practice fun as it brings fresh air each time.

You see, I am no different than you; I love to stay in my comfort zone and have learned to challenge myself with new experiences for the sake of growth.

We resist change, no matter how bad it gets

We stay in relationships, occupations, or situations that are not serving us. We live up to the proverb, “Better devil you know than the one you don’t.” How can we practice that logic? If you are in a situation you would love to change; you should take steps to change. No matter how difficult the problem, change should be regarded as our means for growth.

When we are outside our comfort zone, we grow, learn, and build our resilience and creativity. It takes new thought and creativity to adapt to new opportunities. There is no life without change; stagnation is death. Understanding this allows us to accept that we can change alongside the experience of new life when things change. Learning to live in our green growing edge by staying open to our growth and the opportunities and challenges is how we honor life.

Bring wonder and curiosity to the situation

A tool I use when new situations unfold in my life, both opportunities that I seek and the surprises that appear, is to remain curious. The stream of thoughts I had when I was diagnosed with breast cancer was “I wonder . . .what I will learn, who I will meet, what the journey will look like, who I am going to be at the end, what golden nuggets (bits of wisdom) I will gather along the way.”

Staying in the “I wonder” question allows you to accept the circumstances. It is a way of moving forward to the next phase of your life with anticipation of what will be. What will be is not going to be positive or negative; it will be what you make it.

Decide on how you want to show up

So, after ‘wonder’ comes ‘decision.’ You decide what you will make of the situation; will it be uplifting or depleting? Will you be a victim or a victor? You may not control what you face, but you do control how you will face it. How you’ll show up and how others will see you. You can make the experience your own.

A quote from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet says, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” You have control over how you perceive the situation; even tricky situations have a hidden gift inside of them. When you are in the middle of the condition, you may not see it, yet once it is over, you can see clearly. Have you had situations in your life that you first dreaded, and afterward, you saw how it turned out to be a good thing, or how much you grew from it?

My unwanted change, cancer treatments

Keeping in mind that while walking with cancer, I was going to face some grueling and uncomfortable treatments and circumstances, I knew I had control over how each experience would manifest.

For instance, chemotherapy treatments are avoided and detested by patients prescribed this medicine to kill the cancer cells. I did not deny that it would be a harsh treatment, yet instead of calling chemo by its name, I chose to call it “the golden juice of life.” I purposely did that to acknowledge that I wanted life by accepting this treatment in my body. It was going to give me life. The golden juice of life was working to provide me with life by shrinking the tumors aggressively growing in my body.

Calling it by its name made me think of its adverse effects on other people, and I decided I was not going to have those effects, so I changed its name to something that represented life to me.

Viewing that treatment in a different allowed me to show up differently to the medical staff and others during the 16 infusions over five months. Instead of waking up on the day of chemo thinking of a deadly fluid being in my body, my thoughts were of praise for the treatment.

I changed the perception of treatment in my mind. Therefore, it changed the way I responded to it. “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change,” said Dr. Wayne Dyer.

I believe this mental move changed my experience because I did not have the side effects that many get from the treatment. I did not view it as my enemy, so it did not attack my body in the way it affects others. What you resist persists. Instead of viewing the treatment as something that would kill cells, my vision was that it was giving me life. It was an expansive way of viewing the same situation that others view in a contractive way.

At the end of the treatment, my nurse was shocked at the blood results on the last day of chemo. Before every chemo infusion, the medical staff tests your blood to ensure you can take the treatment. All along, week after week, my numbers remained healthy, and on the last day, the results indicated that I was better than when the chemo started. These results are not typical, so she shared them with the rest of the medical staff, which made a great impression on them. Along with calling chemo the golden juice of life, I also committed myself to other practices, such as religiously drinking bone broth, listening to a recording I made as a meditation, and envisioning the desired result. In concert, all the practices worked to safeguard me from the common cancer patient experience.

Instead of cursing the experience and reacting to the circumstances, I would face, I decided to do certain things that helped my thinking and body transform the experience and make it my own. My teacher says, “You can let the circumstance have you, or you can have the circumstance. You have a choice.”

Change is inevitable, Growth is optional

So as ‘change’ rears its ugly head, choose to stay curious and wonder, then decide how you will navigate the opportunity. By choosing to stay in the energy of wonder, you become creative and discover ways that can make the experience your own. You are in control of your mind, so you can choose to look at things differently than society dictates.

To quote John C. Maxwell, “Change is inevitable, Growth is optional.” I believe that if you are reading this, your choice is to grow as you welcome change into your life. You can challenge the typical way of thinking if it does not serve you as you navigate the opportunities with clarity to grow into your Becoming.