layers of changes

Certain times, life goes linearly but there come times when we take some life-changing decisions that change the most important aspects of our life — geography, climate, people, work. This does not apply to everyone but there are some of us who have been through these changes or are undergoing them right now.

When we are covered by layers of changes above us, and stripped away from what we used to have, it’s one of the most challenging things that we can ever go through in our lives. We lose our sense of direction and may even get lost as we battle the storms. Our mind gets cloudy and we don’t know what step we should take next.

If you’re going through tons of changes right now, I can completely relate to you as this happened to me last year as well. I had to make some tough decisions that changed my life completely in many respects. It was greatly challenging and I had no choice but to roll with the punches. All solutions didn’t come instantly and things went haywire leading to struggles, a few of them that I’m still experiencing.

But I realized that instead of complaining and blaming myself and others, I had to cultivate acceptance and gratitude towards my life right now. That’s the best way to progress ahead. Sure, life is not the same but we humans are biologically designed to adapt. It takes some time but we surely do. We just need to have faith and reacquaint ourselves to the truth that tough times don’t last forever.

It’s easy to get rattled, frustrated, confused, stuck and get caught up in the negative spiral. It’s normal to get shaken and blame ourselves for our current state. We may put unnecessary pressure on ourselves whether it be to find meaningful work, learn a new language to improve our prospects, or build a social circle from scratch. But we need to stop beating ourselves up and let go of unrealistic and lofty expectations from ourselves.

In order to progress ahead, we need to first blow off some steam, relax and take it easy for a while. This may sound counterintuitive but we need to slow down and calm ourselves first. Only with calmness, we’ll able to pave our way towards clarity.

We need to start doing things that we enjoy and make us feel good. We need to let the stress and tension release by becoming physically active and moving around.

And once we feel better and hopeful, we can pick one thing and make it our primary focus, for instance, learning a language. As we do this, we need to be patient with ourselves and keep doing actions even if we don’t see any outcomes. With time, as we develop mastery and focus on one thing that can bring a significant change in our work or our life, we’ll able to easily move forward.

Along with that, we need to also get started on the path of meaningful contribution. This will help us find meaning in our lives and empower us to go through difficult times. For instance, if we are finding ourselves geographically displaced, we can bring our culture and share it with the local community in a meaningful way such as cooking home-based recipes for new acquaintances or friends, or get familiarized with the new culture by participating in a volunteering opportunity. Another alternative is to participate in online communities and doing meaningful work on the Internet such as blogging, writing or teaching a subject.

Most importantly, instead of despising our fate, we need to fall in love with it and start living the new chapter of our life. We need to let go of our past and any negative emotions that we are still carrying around.

These are times when we need to be patient with ourselves and take care of ourselves in the best way we can. We don’t have control over everything, but we can control our perception. As we start seeing the silver linings and positive things about our current situation and simply focus on them again and again, we’ll be able to get our life back on track. Just take one day at a time and do and live your best, things will start to fall in order soon.