Mastering the Fear of Change

You want to change your job, you know you need to move forward, enough of the old boss, enough of the same people everyday, you have the potential to go far and you will...looking though all the opportunities on the market, you can feel your horizons rise until...the day you walk into the interview. Suddenly you realize your whole life would change and what glistened as a golden opportunity on the horizon now takes shape... So the job pays more and it comes with a car and what exactly is expected of you? How many miles do you have to drive each week? Will they turn your life to hell?

We all know the feeling- when change is about to happen, it gets scary. From the first visit abroad to the job change, from leaving school to getting married, change is a vital part of life, we all know it so why would we be afraid?

And then comes the heroism of the coaching world, catapulting you into a state of mind in which decisiveness is your true identity and nothing will stop you. YES, YOU CAN DO IT!

Until...you are back out there, on your own asking yourself: but what if it doesn't work out as I want it to? How will it be? Is this all theory?

There are many ways in which we can conquer our fear.
However, to believe that the fear is our enemy and must be overcome, to me, is a bit of a stale old hat.

I am done with making fear the enemy, just as I am done with using self blame to explain why things haven't happened the way I wanted them to before.

So are we back to feel the fear and do it anyway?
I would like to say that the way to deal with your fear should depend on the kind of fear, the thoughts behind it and most of all you.

We are all different in many ways and what I call fear may be a composition of a certain set of emotions and thoughts, that is totally different from what your fear might entail.

Usually our fear is made up from a chain of thoughts projecting an unknown future result that may be imagined as unpleasant. Have you ever met anyone who has become a great master of painting the picture with all the possible problem routes in their mind? I certainly have been trained extensively in problem painting. In the same time I could paint a picture of roses and beauty, but that would be naïve.
Being grown up and mature, we know better than that.

Or should we not paint a picture at all as to not be disappointed and not loose ourselves in non-existing ideals? That is a more Buddhist approach-acknowledging all that is as an illusion...

My observation is that without a picture, I can be pleasantly surprised of the outcome or still not like it but there is a certain distance, as I am not constantly measuring it against what it was in my mind. That has benefits and weaknesses. I like to feel enrolled in my experience and love the buzz of things being even better than expected. And also in my mind, pictures come in quicker than the decision not to have them.

But is it really the pictures in our mind that determine how we feel? Is the expectation the real problem?
Or is there something else?
Have you ever expected something, and when it turned out differently and you were angry?
Ok, have you ever expected something, things turned out differently and you didn't mind?

The more useful question to ask is: what do we make of the experience?
If we measure against how things 'should' be, we are more likely to get angry. When we can allow things to be the way they are, we are more likely to keep flowing.

So what about fear... if fear is a chain of pictures projecting unpleasant yet unknown results, we have a few options: we can leave the pictures in our mind and be curious about the real outcomes and flow with it.
Or we might want to change the pictures in our mind and make them pretty or pleasant at least and then see what the experience brings and go with that. In good old Beatle fashion- let it be.

Isn't it interesting, that it doesn't really matter what we do- but how we let go of measuring what is against what we like to think should be?

To master your fear of change, you can either master the change. Or change the fear.
It's up to you, the master.


To listen to a song reffering to this, please check out CLIFFS OF INSANITY by Diva Eve. Please see below!
the tune is available from itunes...