Welcome to my blog! I’ve always liked a good blog and hopefully I have some good stuff to share with you.
This week I’m going to concentrate on change and, in particular, the fear of change that almost all of us have. I’ve banged on about this quite a lot over the past couple of years after discovering that this is me so apologies to any of my friends who have heard it all before!
There are a few reasons that change is difficult but the biggest reason is fear. It may not show up as proper anxiety-ridden, stomach-churning, horrifying fear that we associate with being scared but it’s there. It’s there in the procrastination, the self-doubt and making excuses about why you can’t make the change. All of this is fear. And it’s a completely natural reaction.
For a long time, I had anxiety which ranged from being nervous going to meetings to actually not getting on a flight once because I was so scared (and a whole range of other incidents in-between). I always thought that if I could get rid of my fear, I’d be able to do everything I wanted to in my life. Whether that was going out for a night out without drinking a load first, or getting on a plane without feeling like my world was going to fall apart for a week beforehand.
It took me a long time to realise that we can’t get rid of fear completely – we need it for survival – but learning the difference between fear that gets us out of a life-or-death situation and fear of what might happen is really important if you want to live a happy and fulfilled life.
When you’re contemplating a change, your mind’s automatic reaction is often fear. When you decide to do something, all those doubts that your mind brings up are really just fear of the unknown. Fear of change. The unknown is scary but so is staying trapped in your unhappiness just because you don’t want to rock the boat.
I spent a long time being unhappy in my job because there were so many reasons not to change career. Financially, how could I change to a whole new career? I’ve got bills to pay and a new career would mean starting on a crappy low wage while I learnt how to do it. Also, what if I started not to enjoy that? Maybe I’m just a naturally miserable person who will never be happy!
And it doesn’t just apply to career change either! Now I know about this fear, I see it everywhere. Even when I’m going on a holiday that I’ve been looking forward to for ages. It shows up as little negative thoughts like “what if it isn’t that great” or “what will happen if I’m ill”. So maybe I should just stay at home and never go to different places? F**k that!
It’s this sort of thing that stops us making big changes, even when we’re desperate. But what we forget is that change doesn’t have to be an all-encompassing, throw everything out of the window and start anew right now type of situation. In fact, far from it. We could just take a little step in a direction that interests us. Or even half a step. We can still go back if we don’t enjoy it or it wasn’t what we thought it was.
I hope you all have a good week x