How are you with change? Some people love it, finding new relationships and experiences exciting and invigorating. Others find change a bit scary, unsettling or discombobulating, preferring familiar places and comfortable routines. I think I have parts of me who like both – I am excited to learn new things all the time, enjoying the feeling of having my mind stretched and preconceptions challenged. But in other ways, I like things to be comfortable and familiar. I enjoy going to my favourite restaurants, drinking the same smoothie every day after the gym, watching beloved movies over and over.
My friends and family tease me about this, knowing how much I like these well-grooved, familiar patterns of life. But my wife, Laura, and I are now embarking on a major new adventure – moving to the country. It’s exciting, as we have been on the brink of this move so many times over the years. We are finally going for it, with a range of push factors meaning it’s time to leave our cosy little flat in north London; and various pull factors drawing us to the lush countryside of East Sussex.
So if you’re more on the change-avoidant side, here are three things I have learned from this unsettling-but-exciting process of moving house, which you may find helpful too…
Feel the fear and do it anyway
In the classic self-help book by Susan Jeffers, Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway: How to Turn Your Fear and Indecision Into Confidence and Action, readers were encouraged to confront their fears, rather than letting them run their lives. Almost 40 years on, this remains good advice – if we let worry and anxiety control us, we would never do anything new or difficult and stay in a narrow comfort zone where everything was predictable and familiar.
It’s helpful to remember that, for all humans, uncertainty is anxiety-provoking, as is feeling out of control. This is why we constantly seek certainty and try to be in control of everything, even though this is clearly not feasible. One of the Buddha’s great insights was that we try to be in control of everything, which is impossible, so this search for control only creates more suffering – in this case stress, frustration and anxiety. I don’t know how it’s going to be living in a small town in East Sussex. I hope it will be enjoyable, that our lives there will find a new rhythm, that we will meet kind, like-minded people. But I have to embrace the uncertainty around that, accept the loss of control I have in my familiar environment, otherwise I will inevitably suffer.
Life is constantly changing, whether we like it or not
Another of the Buddha’s profound insights was that we seek safety, certainty and comfort by wanting things to stay the same. We don’t want to age, so we spend a fortune on anti-ageing products or cosmetic treatments in a desperate attempt to slow an inexorable process. We can no more fight growing older than we can control the tides. Western science now backs up the Buddha’s 2,500-year-old wisdom, helping us understand that everything, from the atomic level on up, is in a state of flux and change.
The more I accept that I am growing older – and that my life goes through stages, different relationships, homes, phases of my career – the calmer and more content I will be. Counterintuitively, accepting change makes us far more comfortable with it. Fighting change over which we have no power only causes suffering.
How might this apply in your life? Do you find yourself clinging on tightly to things that are, in actuality, beyond your control? How are you with ageing? Do you fight or embrace it? This is not to say that we should passively accept our fate and never try to grow or change, or resist destructive forces like climate change or injustice. But the old AA saying applies, that we should try to change what we can and accept what we can’t. Otherwise we inevitably suffer.
There are cycles and seasons to Life
Laura says she thinks in 10-year cycles of her life, which I think is characteristically wise. We have lived in this flat for around 10 years. And we lived in the last one for about 10 years before that. So maybe this next stage will last around a decade, then we can try something else, maybe somewhere else. And this is how life goes, no? We have the big, meta seasons of life: childhood, young adulthood, middle and old age. Other cultures knew this and people lived their lives accordingly. There were rituals, stories, rhythms to life. This shared understanding helped make ageing easier, as it was a communally shared flow, not an individual struggle.
What are the cycles of your life? Are they clear? This might be a good journalling exercise, to look back at your life in decades and think where you lived, who your friends/partners were in these different life stages, your values and goals, hopes and dreams. It’s interesting to see these change through life, even the things we thought were profoundly important to us or a bedrock of our existence when we were younger.
For example, I used to have a deep, burning desire to be a novelist. I even wrote three (unpublished!) novels when I was younger, had an agent and was on the cusp of becoming a published author, but it didn’t work out. Although that was painful at the time, I now see that this was how I learned to write – through the process of writing. This led to a first career in journalism and later as a psychotherapist who writes extensively, including posts like this one. I don’t think I will ever write another novel and I’m fine with that. Different life stage. Different season.
So as we start the somewhat gruelling process of packing boxes, clearing 10 years of unloved and unwanted stuff from our loft and all the other mundanity of buying and selling a property, although parts of me are nervous about all this change, most of me is excited, ready. It’s time for a new season – one which will, I hope, make us both happy. In the peace and tranquillity of the countryside. Watch this space to find out how it goes!
The practice
Whenever you feel anxious or stressed about change, it’s always helpful to breathe your way through it. This will calm and soothe your nervous system, giving you a little more mindfulness and non-reactive space in which to make a calmer, clearer decision. You can try one of my breathwork practices on Insight Timer, Ease Your Stress with Colour Breathing, which you can listen to now by clicking on the button below. I hope it helps.
Love,
Dan ❤️