How Do You Adapt to Change?
Change is the only constant in the Universe. How do you adapt when it happens?
The only absolutely certain constant in the Universe is change. Change will happen – sometimes slowly, sometimes instantaneously. Like it or not, change happens.
Much you can do nothing about. The planet is turning, winds come and go, volcanoes erupt, the earth quakes, and yadda-yadda. You can vote, attend protests, give money to worthy causes – and that’s the limit of what you can do on that level of change.
When it comes to your life, and the things that happen to you – how you adapt to them is entirely on you.
Some people are very good at adapting to change when it happens. Others are less good at it. Of course, some people just don’t adapt well or at all.
This is where a great deal of conflict comes from. Because of the inability of some to adapt, they try so hard to maintain their perceived notion of status quo that they resist, fail to adapt and wind up taking a stand that is based on artifices, false realities, and sometimes outright lies.
They hold to an idea that may, for the very briefest moment, have existed – but when gone, their failure to be adaptable causes them to instead be intractable.
When it comes to adapting to change when it affects you personally, you have the power to choose what to do.
Adaptation is a conscious effort
Adapting to change comes easily for very few. In my own experience, the easiest way to do this is via mindfulness.
Mindfulness is practicing being conscious in the here-and-now of what you are thinking, what and how you are feeling, and the intent of any actions you are taking. That awareness puts you inside your head, which lets you have influence and control over your mindset/headspace/psyche.
Hence, when change happens, you are better prepared to do something with it.
The ability to adapt serves many purposes. It makes it a lot easier not just to go with the flow and be less rigid in your approach to life in general. In the process, it makes it easier to shift your consciousness as situations arise that may demand for you to do so.
Being rigid and inflexible may feel like a modicum of control. But the truth is quite the opposite. If you are too rigid and inflexible you are far more prone to breaking.
When change happens, at whatever speed that it does, your reaction to it is a choice. Generally, these are your options:
- Ignore it. Self-explanatory.
- Go with it. Flow down the river of change.
- Resist it. As in don’t accept it by being rigid and inflexible.
- Fight it. As in choose a means of resistance to it to create another change.
- Direct or redirect it. Adapt as needs be, and work to control or alter it.
There are other options, of course. But whatever change you encounter, you get to make the conscious effort to decide and choose what to do with it.
Shit happens over which you have no control. Adaptation can mean the difference between victimhood and opportunity.
Adapt as part of your response
Your car was totaled in an accident. The person you intended to marry unexpectedly dumped you. That perfect job ended. A sudden change has taken your life away from where you thought it was going.
See the choices above for five ways in which you can respond to it. But if you choose any of these, a combination of them, or something else, that’s not the whole story.
When shit happens, you might feel like you’re a victim. Hell, if you are robbed at gunpoint, assaulted, or injured by a hit and run driver, you are a victim of that happening.
At that moment, yes, you’re a victim. How long you choose to remain a victim is up to you.
No, I am not saying forget that bad thing happened. Nor am I saying forgive the perpetrator – especially if it was malicious in intent. For a nonspecific amount of time, it is perfectly reasonable and expected that you will have trouble coping with whatever happened.
Yet you probably know somebody who is ALWAYS a victim. Something always happens that leaves them victimized. The trauma that impacts them in this way or that is the result of what happened. Again, not saying there isn’t legitimacy to these things – but there is, often, also a choice.
Adapt, overcome, and take a new direction. As a part of your response – maybe not immediately, but along the way – you adapt.
If you can, now you get that new car you were eyeing or find one more suitable than that which was lost. Perhaps not marrying that person prevented long-term trauma and awfulness. As perfect as the job was, now maybe you find better – or even start your own business. How you adapt and move forward is a decision only you can choose.
You adapt as needs be for you
You have, during your life, adapted to things along the way. Going from part-time day-care to kindergarten required adapting. Primary schooling to college, vocational training, or entering the workforce required adaptation. Every relationship will require you to adapt your life accordingly.
This can be easy; and it can be hard. Nobody else can tell you what will be necessary, how it will feel, or what standards may exist – because, frankly, they don’t.
How I adapt to change is not how YOU adapt to change. What I do – how I think and feel is unique to me. My experience is not the same as yours.
I can’t tell you how you should adapt, when adaptation is necessary, and on and on. This is wholly on you. Accepting that change is a constant helps make it easier to adapt. But the shape of that is variable for everyone.
When the path of your life is thrown off-course by change, you can decide how to choose to adapt. Only you know what is right for you. But being flexible, aware, and mindful that change can and will occur – and ultimately prepared to be adaptable – will help your life to flow a lot more freely.
Thus, you’ll be better able to maintain balance and live how you most desire to. Adaptation goes hand-in-hand with conscious reality creation. Recognizing the need to adapt to change gives you a lot more influence and control for yourself, as well as over the reality you live within.
Change is the only constant in the Universe. How do you adapt when it happens?
This is the four-hundred and forty-ninth journey into my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are ideas for – and my personal experiences with – mindfulness and walking along the path of life to consciously create reality. I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. I further desire to empower myself and my readers with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-blog and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is availablehere. My additional writing, both fiction and non-fiction, are available here.
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