Irrespective of the changes going on around us and the decisions made impacting how we operate there is one thing that remains true…
40-60% of what we do everyday is a routine
We create habits and routines to operate efficiently and free up brain space to put towards things that need greater attention and focus. With routine comes familiarity, comfort and certain – something we come to value highly.
Small changes add up over time. With each change we learn how to adapt and adjust, however, if the changes continue to add up in a way in which we struggle to make sense of them we can quickly move from feeling like we are coping well with change to not coping, sometimes without realising we’ve crossed that threshold.
In our current environment we have had to make changes we make to how we operate, changes to routine, changes to our freedoms and changes to the degree of choice available to us.
Each of us has a different tolerance to change. Some people feel they have a high tolerance for change whereas others need time to process each change, make sense of it and find a way to best adapt. There is no right or wrong way to adapt to change and this journey is personal and different for everyone. When we lose sight of this fact it can lead us to being judgemental or critical of others who adapt to change differently.
When our tolerance has been reached and we find ourselves in unfamiliar territory it can be unsettling. It may even feel like we’ve been knocked off our axis, perhaps even spinning out of control in some way, needing operate with a higher level of uncertainty than what may be comfortable.
Being in control vs feeling out of control tends to lead to a set of attitudes, feelings and actions that cultivate completely different outcomes.
These attitudes, feelings and actions feed into each other. For example, if you believe “no matter what I do it’s never enough” it will lead to you feeling frustrated, sad and hopeless which leads to you demanding more of yourself or trying to do even more for others and when that doesn’t work it reaffirms that “no matter what I do it’s never enough” and around you go again. Soon you get trapped going round and round, spinning in circles not knowing how to break the cycle and often creating new, additional cycles.
So, how do you break the cycle?
The answer is quite simple. Simple to say, harder to follow through on.
Make a different CHOICE
You can choose to focus on what can’t be done or you can choose to focus on what can
Choose to fight against how you expect things to be or adapt to the reality of what is
Choose to focus on the problem or look for solutions
Choose to hold expectations around how others should change or focus on changes you need to make
To help you get started take some time to reflect, reset and refocus.
REFLECT on what has occurred over the past period of time and think about what you learnt about yourself and others. How have your responses and reactions lead to attitudes, feelings and actions that are unhelpful or unresourceful?
RESET how you think, how you want to feel and how you want to act based on what you uncovered when you took the time to stop and reflect. Write a list of things you need to stop thinking, stop feeling and stop doing and what you need to replace them with by creating a list of what you need to start thinking, start feeling and start doing.
REFOCUS on the most important choice you could make around what to stop and what to start that will have the biggest impact for you.
Sometimes it’s less about knowing exactly where to start and more about starting somewhere.
The choice is yours
You can choose to continue making the same choices that lead to the same responses and reactions and expect the outcome to change or you can choose to do, be or think differently which will guarantee a different outcome.