Leverage change into personal growth. 3 practices to integrate and manage personal change.
By: Diana Carson-Walker
Tags: Compassion, Change Management, Emotional Health, Mindfulness, Storytelling

The crazy toppling of my narrow world forced me to navigate change. I sucked at it.

Mom recovered, and my family’s move from the suburbs to the country was both wonderful and awful. My new friend, Linda, lived on a farm. I loved helping with her chores.

I also attracted bullies.

“Doganna… Doganna…” Ronnie’s chant made my blood boil. Hating school, uprooted and bullied, I was sure my life was over.

Worst of all, I was too overweight to catch Ronnie and pound him.

Then I began studying the popular girls. No Ronnies torturing them. That summer I lost weight and got the cool jeans. Linda and I bought make-up and brought more friends into our circle.

Now I was quick enough to catch Ronnie if I wanted, but I no longer felt the need, and his teasing melted in the face of my new confidence.

I discovered I could survive change.

Now, you could say I’ve become a change junkie.

My education spans IT, Environmental Science, Professional Acting, and Writing. I’ve lived in eleven places in the last ten years; in three states and two countries.

Even with my love of change, 2020 has sorely tested me. My instinctively developed coping mechanisms have let me down. I was melting, unable to get out of my chair.

Navigating change is a balance between control and flexibility. Too rigid, you burn out, (you can never catch all the Ronnies), too loose, and you melt into a pile of goo.

Although I intuitively adapted to change in the past, to battle my impending goo-self, I’ve recently formalized a deliberate practice.

Intentionally nurturing my change resilience has anchored my fuzzy days; I am finding it easier to stick with my fitness program, grow my freelance writing career, and keep the house clean.

Ok, that last part is a lie. Dust bunnies are morphing into killer rabbits as we speak.

Why resilience — and what is it?

Resilience is the ability to return to shape or recover quickly from difficulty. It is not rigid or controlling; it is the ability to adapt without losing our “self”.

Neuroscience can measure resilience in the brain’s connections.

People able to handle change and stress more constructively have more connections between the executive part of the brain, (the prefrontal cortex), and the emotional part of the brain (the amygdala).

When change triggers fear in the amygdala, the person with more of these connections can use their executive function to quiet negative emotions, allowing them to plan and act more efficiently.

The results? Change resilience.

Executive function? I lose my to-do list before I finish it!

If planning and acting are not your strong suits, no worries. With some love, you can train your brain like a cute but unruly puppy. Brains are neuroplastic, meaning that the below exercise will, with repetition, rewire your brain.

Each time you use this, you are creating more connections to your inner executive and becoming more resilient to stress, including stress caused by change. With practice, belief becomes your habitual thought pattern.

Believe you can manage by telling your story.

Belief drives the stories we tell ourselves. As a child, I was afraid of change because I believed I couldn’t thrive in a different place. When we face something new, it’s easy to believe we can’t cope. Changing this narrative of non-belief will let you move forward with more practices.

This is not just a magical belief or clicking our ruby slippers. You’re no dummy, and your brain needs proof. In fact, our brains have a “negativity bias”, meaning the human brain is wired for negativity. Changing your beliefs takes a bit of work and some tricks to fire up empathy.

How

Think of times you’ve overcome something — look at the qualities that got you through. Compassion? Humor? Courage? Stubbornness? Resourcefulness? Gratitude? Examine your experience and see how you’ve adapted in the past.

Then

Tell that story. Stories build empathy in our brains. What better way to empathize with yourself than to dig into your own story?

Write a letter, or record a video to your younger self thanking them for developing those qualities. Tell them how you are still using the qualities they honed. By telling these stories in a creative exercise, you relive the experiences where you learned these qualities and then strengthen your brain’s connections to them.

The Hero’s Journey

To dig in and really make a story that will resonate, use an abbreviated hero’s journey to map that story of yours. If you are familiar with the structure, use your favorite version, otherwise, use these steps:

Context: The hero (you) is in the regular world, minding their own business.

What was your regular world? What questions did you have?

This was me with the cereal bowl and my questions for my mother. I already dreaded change that I somehow sensed on the horizon.

BAM! Something incites a big change.

Did you fight the change? Did you meet a mentor?

The tornado plus move was my inciting incident. I tried to fight the change — I actually ran away for five hours, two weeks after our move.

My mentor was the school librarian; she gave me the support to embrace my nerdy, book-loving self.

The hero enters another world, meets enemies and friends, faces challenges.

Who were your friends? Your enemies? What small tests did you meet along the way?

Linda was my friend, and Ronnie an enemy. Some of my small tests included; being treed by a goose, getting my squirt ring confiscated by my teacher, and Ronnie’s taunting.

The enormous challenge — AKA The Cave.

This is the epic battle. Some part of the hero dies here. What died for you?

Before the move, I had lived in a world that catered to me. My mother had dressed me and done my hair. I moved from childhood to adolescence, and the dependent child died in that cave.

A reward — the hero finds new strength.

What qualities did you discover in yourself?

I discovered my agency and took charge of my appearance. I now carried confidence as I navigated this world.

A return home — often with one ultimate test.

The “home” the hero returns to is never the same, because the hero has grown, and has new powers and confidence.

Coming back to school that next fall and facing Ronnie was my final test. With my new gift of confidence, his first attempt at teasing just fell flat, and he gave up.

Examining my own life within this structure lets me step back and admire the heroine, bypassing some of my negativity bias against my own abilities. As my brain empathizes with that heroine, I become deeply convinced that I made it through and now have my treasure.

The hard part — The Cave.

You might hit a rough spot in The Cave. In my own life, these are the parts I like to glaze over. I tell myself that no one wants to hear that part when in reality; I don’t want to hear it.

It’s ugly, it hurts.

The cave in this story was that summer. My childhood evaporated, and my parent’s compliant, easy-going child disappeared, replaced by a raging, frightened adolescent.

Mom and I fought over my hair, but she took me to buy makeup even though she didn’t wear it. My father promptly criticized my new jeans as too tight, the platform shoes as too tall, but still hugged me when I cried. They worried as I starved myself thin, swimming frantically and living on Fresca.

My reliance on my parents for direction and protection shredded that summer. My friends showed me the best way to wear makeup, and my new confidence was my protection.

Change includes loss and grief.

If stepping into that cave holds too much grief, therapists and authors Barry Michels and Phil Stutz offer a way to process loss, pain, and grief using a visualization tool they call The Tower.

Walking you through death, illumination, and transcendence, regular use of The Tower will teach you that pain isn’t the end: That empowerment lies on the other side of the ego death that loss brings.

Using this tool trains me to open emotionally. Rather than avoid the ego-death that rejection of my work brings, I continue through it to more potential beyond.

I also use it when entering the cave of a story. I am training my brain to believe that something great lies on the other side of pain.