What assumptions are you making about your experience of change?

In one of the latest workshops about navigating change and uncertainty one of the participants said "when change is forced upon you, you feel you have been pushed to the corner of a room that gets smaller and smaller. You feel impotent, out of control and your self-esteem is no longer there".

What I heard on that day was just another description of how we can perceive change, especially when it's sudden and unexpected. It feels like a ruthless chaotic force that interrupts the course of our careers - and our lives - and often shakes the very core of who we are. We find ourselves questioning our convictions, our beliefs, our skills, our achievements, the value we have built and developed along a path that was once familiar and safe to us. We feel angry at other people and at ourselves; we feel guilty about the decisions we have made; we don't recognise ourselves anymore. We stop trusting ourselves. When change is something that we didn't plan, we may feel at a loss and struggle to find a way out. We doubt ourselves and do whatever we can to resist it.

Self-esteem in times of change and uncertainty can be knocked out. We can feel vulnerable, fragile and be very judgemental towards ourselves. We can notice we are again surrounded by "ghosts from the past" that we thought we had defeated - or we just kept ourselves so busy to keep our fears at bay. This is what very often leads us to experience anger as we feel we are being forced to deal with "unsolved things". We find ourselves with the opinion we have about ourselves. Whilst a sudden unexpected change can be experienced as a "lifequake" leading to self-doubt - and we will spend the time we need to mentally and emotionally process that change - we could also give ourselves the permission to see it as an opportunity to reflect on the relationship we have with ourselves and what we can do to have a more helpful and positive opinion of ourselves if we find our self-esteem is really low.

If this resonates to you and you are feeling low, doubtful to the extent that you are discounting whatever you have accomplished and been so far, I would like to invite you to ask yourself a few questions:

• What is the change you're experiencing telling you about the opinion you have about yourself?
• How does your opinion show up in the way you think, feel and act?
• On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate your emotions and body sensations?
• What predictions are you making and what precautions are you taking to resist change?

Going through these questions can help you identify some common themes in terms of situations/areas where you doubt yourself or think badly about yourself. These common themes might be a reflection of the rules for living you have consciously or unconsciously established that are guided by your bottom line, the opinion you have about yourself. You might also think about what makes you feel really good as it might just be what your rules tell you you should be or do (one of my rules for living was about reading self-help books and watching educational programmes that would fulfil my interest in learning and nurture my work. It took me some time to realise - through some coaching and introspective work - that I was also feeding the opinion I had about myself "I'm not good enough").

Once you have an idea about what rules for living are feeding your bad opinion it's time to ask yourself how is that rule affecting the way you're coping with change, what are their benefits, what are their disadvantages, and what can you do to create an alternative rule that is more realistic and helpful that you can then test to see if it can work for you (I started reading crime novels and allowed myself to do spend more time in nature).

Rules and assumptions for living guide our behaviour and enable us to cope with our everyday lives. Rules for living are necessary for us to make sense of the world around us and to help us function on a day-to-day basis. So, having rules, in itself, is not unhelpful. The question is what type of rules do we have? Helpful rules are realistic, flexible, and adaptable, and they enable us to function healthily and safely. Unhelpful rules are unrealistic, unreasonable, excessive, rigid, and unadaptable (in my case it was about having to know everything I could to feel more competent at work and navigate more effectively through my transition from recruitment into coaching. I will let you imagine how frustrating, doubtful and miserable the very start of the change process was for me! Everything I was doing - even when I was loving doing it - was guided by these words "I'm not good enough").

A sudden and unexpected change might "push yourself to the corner of a room that gets smaller and smaller and where you feel impotent, out of control and badly about yourself". What I would encourage you to do is identify one rule or assumption for living that you would like to challenge and consider an alternative rule that is more balanced and flexible. What can you do to put this rule/assumption into practice on a daily basis?

It will require practice and effort. Remind yourself that your rules for living have become solid habits. You will experience setbacks - it's OK - because it means you're unlearning old habits that no longer serve your change. It might feel slow but guess what, you're gradually creating a new helpful and more balanced opinion about yourself.

#change #lifechange #careerchange #transitions #selfesteem #rules