Introduction

Embrace the shift was designed to give you an action plan for dealing with change.

If you’re like most people, you handle change as it comes. Your life is busy. There are plenty of distractions, and your responsibilities are never-ending. So, you’ve got a lot on your plate. You might have needed to look at your relationship with change.

You work through your regular daily routine, hoping that everything goes smoothly. If life throws a wrench into your plan, you try to figure out how to deal with it. You wait until an unexpected change occurs and then try to make the best of what might be a bad experience. There are better ways to handle change.

Having a game plan to help you deal with change is vital to growth. Companies have business plans they follow to create the most profitable situation. Athletes and sports teams draw up game plans before they compete. Politicians would never consider running for election without detailed public relations plans.

Change will happen, and it often strikes at the worst possible time and in the worst possible way. If change is inevitable, and you know it is, having an action plan that helps you create the best possible outcome makes sense.

This five-day change mastery challenge gives you a path to the best resolution when you experience unforeseen or difficult change. That begins with taking a look at how you currently handle change.

You’ll discover how a growth mindset can help you get the most out of new and unforeseen experiences. You learn how to build resilience, so you recover quickly from the unexpected.

We’ll talk about how mindfulness and positive self-talk can give you a hand up on change and close your challenge by putting all this information together. You will create a short but effective action plan for dealing with change.

Make sure you perform the daily exercises to get the most out of your efforts. We also recommend you read through the entire five-day plan before starting. This will help you maximize your challenge for the most value.

Challenge 1: Understanding Your Relationship with Change

Think of an area in your life that you want to improve upon. If you don’t know what you are doing wrong, how do you know what you need to change? The same idea applies to getting the most out of your experience with change.

You have to understand what your relationship is first. Then, you can adapt accordingly.

Today, you are going to be honest with yourself. Think about the most recent change you experienced that could have gone better. Looking back, you realize that your response could have created a much better resolution.

Why did you respond the way you did? What would you do differently if you could go back and start all over? Did some previous experience cause a knee-jerk reaction that produced a less-than-favorable outcome? What would that conversation be like if you could talk to yourself as if you were giving advice to someone else?

Some of the many thoughts you have every day are questioning in nature. You question your behavior in an attempt to make better choices in the future. What happens if you don’t write down that information? Your ideas are often lost because you have plenty of unbidden thoughts that pop up and push your previous thoughts aside.

That’s why today’s challenge action focuses on journaling. You get your thoughts down on paper where you can see them and pick them apart to understand your relationship with change better.

Exercise: Journal about a past change you’ve experienced and how you felt.

[Picture – Richard Collins – Unsplash]