Changes Keep My Life United

Sooner or later we do it: we realize that true intelligence lies in knowing how to adapt to changes with our head held high and our gaze awake. After all, nothing that arrives stays, and nothing that leaves is completely lost. Resisting them is what hurts, assuming them is understanding that without changes there is no butterfly.

There is a fact that does not stop being curious about the changes: our species has reached where it is thanks to them, and to the evolutionary progress that these small innovations have offered us. However, the brain prefers permanence, stability and that comfort zone where there are no dangers  and where our survival is safeguarded. Now, in that area of ​​calm and security where nothing new happens, dissatisfaction and boredom inevitably arise.

Charles Darwin himself already said it in his works: the one who survives in this complex and sometimes threatening world is not the strongest nor the most intelligent, but the one who best adapts to changes. However, no one has taught us how to do that, they have not educated us to be brave when someone leaves us, we do not have a manual on how to face the passage of time, nor have they told us what skills we need to take that turn of direction that sometimes it needs our existence to be a little bit happier.

Sometimes, as David Bowie explained to us in his song “Changes”,  there is no choice but to turn around and face the unknown, that “something” that we have been waiting for so long while maintaining a wrong life.

Let’s reflect on this next.

Changes in women: crises and revolutions

When we talk about changes in women, we think almost instantly of that advance from childhood to youth or from youth to maturity, where the hormonal revolution takes us into a universe of a complex of cycles, phases and stages where we can face new challenges, new learnings. Now, let’s put aside these physical or hormonal dimensions to delve into what really matters:

Bowie said in his song that of “I still don’t know what I was waiting for”, I still don’t know what I was waiting for , a common and persistent sensation during a good stage of our lives, until suddenly we choose to stop waiting to act. It may be curious, but that “leap” in the personal growth of women and the real search for change does not happen at 40, it begins at this stage but ends at 50.

This is how Rosi Braidotti, professor in Philosophy and director of the Center for the Humanities at the University of Utrecht, explains it to us, who affirms that “ fifty-something women” are destroying myths in today’s society. They are women who have faced difficulties and who are starting another stage where they can reach a new fullness of life. They do it thanks to the achievement of renewed goals, greater personal security and the conviction that neither a divorce is the end of the world, nor the empty nest cause for depression.

Changes are new opportunities to face without fear, unexplored routes to continue navigating to the beat of your own life.

The 3 emotions that accompany the changes

Not all changes are traumatic nor do they mean the end of a stage. Most of them are a simple continuity, an advance that is in perfect harmony with our personal growth process. However, and here comes the conflictive aspect, not all of us are willing to see that need to move forward, to take that brave step that places us beyond the barbed wire of our comfort zone.

Thanks to interesting research carried out at the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory, it was possible to show that when initiating a change, our brain sets in motion three very specific types of emotions that must be broken down, understood but not avoided. You have to live them to channel them and thus facilitate progress.

Let’s see it in detail.

The wrath

Allowing ourselves to feel a strong emotion from time to time is not negative. Anger, for example, can act as a great motivator because it reveals the current malaise in all its starkness.

In addition,

The passion

We know: it can be somewhat contradictory to think that after anger passion can emerge. However, we will understand it instantly by taking these details into account:

• Anger has convinced us that we need a change.

• That “anger” pushes us to fight for what we want, and in turn, that goal placed on our horizon is what inspires us every day, what instills in us passion, longing, desire.  

Modesty

When we have started the machinery of change and we feed it with passion and enthusiasm, we must not fall into false pride, into that mirror where we reflect every day to tell ourselves that everything is going to turn out wonderfully.

• Success is not always guaranteed, therefore, nothing better than keeping a temperate and humble mind that sees the reality of things at all times. 

Changes require will and inspiration, but also always keep the north in our vital compasses so as not to deviate, to always maintain a safe, placid and satisfactory course in each of our changes.

Images courtesy Hajin Bae