Changes as an integral part of our life

Changes occur all the time – it is a natural and inevitable process of our life. Everything is changing around: we can observe us getting older, our kids growing, our body changing, our attitude to our partners, friends and parents getting different. We always find something new in the surrounding world – as everything in it is being a subject to changes.

Still the human nature is arranged so, that any changes cause us to feel resistance or rejection, as they become a sort of stress to our world. Any intrusion of something new into our life is accompanied by disillusionment – we are afraid to lose control over circumstances. Basically, people resist not to changes themselves, but to their sequences – we are not sure in the results of these changes and in their influence upon our well-established life, in new emotional states, feelings and conclusions.

Changes themselves are neither positive, nor negative. What matters in acceptance of changes is how we treat them – our reactions, conclusions and dominating emotions. Actually this lets these changes come into our life impact it in a positive or negative way. To let us ride out all life moments and face the future, it is necessary to percept changes as a natural course of life – fill it with a new meaning, feelings and emotions, and live our lives as a mystery and be less afraid and anxious.
There are many theories, techniques, practices related to this issue. Here, we are calling your attention to a summarized version of change perception stages concept.

So…

5 stages of changes, or how our change perception undergoes five sequential stages.

1 stage – Rejection, or “No, it can’t be so”.

Such phrases as “I can’t believe it”, “It can’t be so”, “It couldn’t’t happen to me!” could describe our reactions. But what you have to remember is that changes come to our life to let us change something in ourselves or in our lives. Surely, when something is changing in our conventional routine, it is very difficult to accept and the first reaction to appear is rejection.

For instance, when a person is fired from work or something happens in partner relations: perhaps, they have reached their limits, or they have become “dead” in fact. At the stage of rejection a person may think that there is a chance to save the situation, or that it has just seemed. This stage features the paradigm “I will survive it, and tomorrow my life will go its usual way”.

The stage of rejection means our reluctance to accept the changed conditions or the seriousness of the situation we are in, and also our expectation that everything will just fall into place by itself. At this stage a person is not able to integrate new information into life paradigms. All the information related to existing changes is often rejected or ignored. A typical reaction is like: “It can’t happen to me” or “If I ignore it, all this will pass at a distance”.

This stage can last for an indefinite period of time – all depends on a person’s willingness and ability to move to the next stages. The danger is that getting stuck here a person cannot draw a line and move on.

2 stage – Irritation.

This stage is also quite normal, because a person loses his customized life mechanisms. Here come anxiety and fears about the future. Appear the thoughts like “Why me?”, “It’s unfair!”,”No! I can’t accept this!”, “When is it going to finish?”

Here comes a new stage, when we do not know yet how to act and our irritation is a natural reaction. When we recognize that the changes are real and they have already touched us, our rejection turns into irritation and anger – we start blaming someone or something for what is happening to us. Curiously enough, our irritation can be directed at anything. People can become annoyed by their bosses, by themselves, by the economic situation, and even by God. You can get peeved at colleagues or family members, and you can discover that people start clashing for the sake of nothing. At this stage we need to be extremely careful, as our irritation has impact on the people closest to us.

If are at this stage, try to find the mechanisms, which could help you to cope with your irritation. Most effective are some dynamic activities: active recreation – jogging, exercises, dancing to dynamic music, housework and cleaning. Men can do sports or work outdoors. Those, who tend to “eat their emotions”, need to be very cautious – perhaps, they will be attracted to the fridge.

3 stage – Bargaining.

Bargaining takes place when we understand clearly that the situation has already occurred, and that if we are in it, we have done something wrong. At this stage we try to make a deal (bargain) with ourselves, with the universe, just to remain in the former positions. Most of deals we try to make with God, with life. We say: “If I promise to do this, then … “. We start bargaining just to pull the changes away or to find the way out – “I will do, if …”, “Only…”.  A person starts making a deal with himself and the people around just to avoid the negative sequences of changes. There appears kind of a list of promises, based mainly on fears. For example, if a person worries about health, he promises to walk more, to take vitamins, to do exercises, etc. At this stage it is necessary to correlate the activated fears with the promises we give ourselves. Still it is important to remember that unfulfilled promises become frustrations and “anchors”, which afterwards impact negatively on the future life.
Important note: the previous stages included different forms of rejection – this stage gets us closer to the process of acceptance.

4 stage – Sadness.

At this stage understanding and appreciation of the changes appear – that time and those opportunities are gone. Life “BEFORE” was planned and had set priorities, but now is the stage of total unknown. Here such questions as “How to live on?”, “How to cope with all this?” come to mind. When we understand, that bargaining does not give any effect, the coming changes become real. When we embrace all the possible changes in life, which will lead to further changes, it makes us feel sadness and kind of despondency.

But there is good news! At this very moment when we recognize that fighting changes does not help, we move to the stage of acceptance. For the first time we start assessing the prospects – assessment of the prospects might give rise to inspiration and creativity, as it makes people explore and search for new opportunities. We discover something new in ourselves, being necessary for the stage of acceptation.
In real life we submerge into different stages at different times and even can come back to the stages we believed to remain in the past, stages can last for different periods, can alternate or exist in parallel, until the moment when the changes become certain deeds or prospective projects. At that very second stage 5 starts – we have not just accepted the changes, but we reorganized our life in the present reality: our relations with beloved people, attitude to health, to work, etc. and we are happy in our today.

5 stage – Acceptance.

Acceptance means that a person is already prepared to work effectively in new conditions. In their essence not changes, but restrictions and losses we suffer are frightening for us. In the situation of pandemic, for instance, lots of people had to change their normal routines, met restrictions or impossibility to act in a usual way (eat in restaurants, go shopping, visit theatres, meet with people, etc.). And the clearer is our understanding of what we have lost, the clearer is the picture – was it really important and vitally essential. We need to analyze our losses, to think of what we are really afraid to lose. It can help us reduce the zone of stress, will give us a clue for direction of further reorganization of our life and we will face the future more peacefully. This hope brings faith that the changes have good prospective, and that everything what is happening has its own special meaning, which we will understand after a while. It is an important characteristic of our ability to cope successfully with the changes – any situation gives an opportunity of growth and development, understanding of the meaning of our actions and emotions.

Someone gets puzzled facing unexpected turns of destiny, but someone comprehends that in the essence crucial changes are always accompanied by surprises – you can feel surprised, or irritated. The choice is always up to us – we spend our forces on resistance or we accumulate energy to integrate the changes with our life.

In conclusion, a short yet very simple practice, which will help to see the routine from the different point.

Practice: Day as a GIFT!

See your new day as a GIFT! Not as an ordinary everyday, loaded with different kind of affairs, obligations, obscure feelings, but as a gift. And think of how would you like to use it? What would you like to do during this day, what positive emotions and feelings would you like to fill it with, what colours would you like to paint it with?

To let the tomorrow of our dream come true, we need to have the today, where we feel ourselves happy, healthy and deserving.

With Love,
The Order of Mevlevi