Adapting to change is the most difficult part of human life. It gets harder as we get older, compared with adapting to change at a young age.
The more we age, the more we like the familiar and the known. We want to stay with the familiar and the known because it’s safe. It’s safe because change seems risky.
And, when the familiar and the known gets broken, we find ways to cry foul at the change that broke the familiar and the known.
Our towns, our cities, our countries, this world, and the universe have all been changing since the beginning. But still, as an individual human ages, he or she becomes more averse to adapting to change.
There are five main challenges that affect our ability to change:
- Letting go of existing emotional attachments, and growing our readiness to build new ones.
- Building mental narratives that see change as something beneficial.
- Dancing with the fear of doing something risky.
- Being flexible enough to diversify in an ever-changing complex world.
- Overcoming the feeling that, “If we avoid talking about it, the change will go away.”
If we acknowledge, understand, and find ways to practically overcome these challenges, we can build our ability to adapt to change.
One way to overcome the above challenges is by having more conversations and more discussions about the change.
Talking about the change builds the narrative shifts required to move and adapt to an upcoming change. Gathering and spreading awareness both help us translate the unfamiliar and the unknown into the familiar and the known. And, when that translation happens—change becomes easier to embrace.
Change is inevitable. It should be in our best interest to acknowledge and build our ability to adapt to change, as well as others’ ability to adapt.