220. Navigating Change with Peace

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 220, Navigating Change with Peace.

This podcast is for people who know that living an extraordinary life is not easy or comfortable. It’s so much better than that. This is Better Than Happy, and I’m your host, Jody Moore.

Hello everyone, welcome to episode 220 of the podcast. We’re going to talk about change today because change is sort of an inevitable part of life. So I want to begin with a story to share with you. This is a true story. This happened, what was it, 15 years ago when we got married.

So, I’ve been a blonde most of my life, okay. As a small child, I had the prettiest blonde hair and on into high school I had mostly blonde hair, but it started to darken up a little, started to turn that lovely dishwater color you might say. And on into college, I discovered highlights.

I discovered that someone will take your hair and put foil in it and a little bit of magical solution and you’re suddenly a bright blonde again. And so, as I discovered this in college and I tried to hold onto the blonde of my childhood, I learned that being a blonde is kind of expensive as an adult.

But there are some things that are important and you find a way to make them work. And as a college student with not very much money, I found a way to pay for my highlights. And so, after college when I was single and dating, I kept coloring my hair and then I met my husband.

And when I met him, I had this beautiful bright blonde hair. And when we got engaged, I started worrying about the expense of my blonde hair and wondering whether or not my new husband was going to agree to the value of it and want to spend that money.

And around the same time, I started noticing pictures of women I really admired that were beautiful who had brown hair. And so I decided to color my hair dark.

Now, I had a wedding coming up, so I knew better than to make a drastic change like that before my wedding. But shortly after, probably a week or two after I got married, I went into the hair salon and I had them dye all of my hair a pretty dark brown.

So, I don’t remember if I told Jake I was doing that or not. It’s kind of like me to not tell him, to just go get my hair colored dark brown. But what I do remember is that it was pretty shocking, especially to myself, but also to my husband. Every time I would catch an even slight glimpse of myself in the mirror, I was like, who is that person? It was very drastic.

Now, my husband, being super wise and kind, said to me, “Honey, I like whatever you like.” But what I’ve found is that my goal of coloring my hair dark was to lower the maintenance and lower the cost of my hair. And it wasn’t working because, underneath that dark color was this bright blonde hair that was trying to shine back through. And so eventually, it turned into sort of a muddy brown.

And so I kept having to go in and get the brown re-colored into my hair. And once I realized that this was going to cost me just as much and require just as much time, I finally just went in and had blonde highlights put back into my poor over-processed beat up hair. But I felt like myself again.

And when I came home with my regular blonde hair and my husband admitted that he actually really preferred me as a blonde – and when I told him that being a blonde was going to be an expense and it wasn’t cheap and it would come due every six to eight weeks, he said, “We’ll make it work.”

And only then did I realize what I brilliant move it was on my part. I had not planned it this way, but going through the shock of brunette and back to blonde again was a good way to get my husband on board with paying for my highlights.

Now, my husband has nothing against brunettes, nor do I. And if I would have decided to keep my hair that color, he would have loved me not any less, I truly believe that. But it was the change that he wasn’t prepared for. It was the change that I wasn’t prepared for.

And, of course, coloring my hair is a tiny little insignificant change and we experience many other much more dramatic, much more life-altering changes in our lives. Some of the changes we experience are exciting. Some of them are heartbreaking.

Some of them are changes that we want and ask for. Some of them are things that we didn’t ask for and, in fact, would never wish upon anyone. Change can come in the form of a new relationship, a new baby, going to school, going to elementary school, middle school, high school, going to college, going on a mission.

Change can be our kids going to elementary school, middle school, high school, to college, on a mission. Moving to a new town is a huge change because it means new jobs, new people, new grocery stores, new routines.

Retirement is a significant change. The end of a relationship for us can be a big change. The end of a relationship for someone we love, like our parents or our children or other people we’re close to can be a big change.

When someone we love dies, whether it be on time or unexpectedly, it still can be a big change. When we see changes in our health conditions, when we have ward boundary changes, ward leadership changes. Now, obviously I could go on all day, but change, obviously, is a significant part of our life.

So in my experience as a coach, I have literally coached thousands of individuals through all kinds of change. And in doing so, I’ve been able to identify some patterns in the way people approach changes that can either make that process more or less painful for them. And that is what I want to share with you today on this episode.

I want to give you seven strategies for navigating change that will enable you to do so with more peace, alright. Here we go.

Strategy number one is to remember that this is normal. This is normal because you have a human brain. And your human brain is more efficient than any computer or calculator or device or anything else that’s been created by man. Your God-made human brain is more amazing and more efficient than any of those things.

So, again, through my work as a life coach, I’ve done tons of study of the brain and I continue to learn about the brain. I love learning about the brain from new research and developments around wellbeing that we have in our world. I’m going to give you just a couple of things that we know about the brain that mean that struggling to deal with change is completely normal.

Okay, so, here’s how efficient your brain is. You can be walking down the sidewalk and you can see something that is thin and cylindrical and long and your brain will immediately decide that that could be dangerous, that could be a snake. And without your consciously thinking about it, your amygdala will kick in and short-circuit all logical thought process and have you just jump out of the way. It’s amazing. It happened within seconds, split seconds, nanoseconds even that you just jump out of the way.

And then later, you realize, oh, I thought that was a snake and it was actually just a tree branch, or maybe it was a snake, right? Later on, you have the conscious thought about it. But first, your brain just intercepts all of that time that it would take to have that rational thought process take place and it just causes you to get yourself out of the way to protect you from danger. It’s amazing.

Now, even when it doesn’t happen instantly like that in what we call an amygdala attack, it can happen in other ways when your brain is super-efficient.

So, for example. We all have routines and habits of behaving throughout our day that we do that we have delegated to the lower brain, that we sort of do unconsciously without even paying attention. Like, when you get in the shower and you’re ready to shampoo your hair, you don’t have to stop and think, now wait, what do I do with the shampoo again? Let me read the directions on the bottle.

You do it, you dump the shampoo into the palm of your hand, you rub it together, you put it in your hair, you suds up your hair and you rinse it out. All the while, you’re thinking about what you need to do today or you’re getting a great idea for something or you’re thinking about whatever you’re thinking about. You’re not thinking about, how do you shampoo to properly wash your hair, because you’ve done it enough times that your super-efficient brain has delegated that to the unconscious part of you that just does it without you thinking.

So, this is an amazing thing about the brain. It helps us operate so well in the world without using too much energy. But when we make a change, when something in our life changes, suddenly, a lot of the things that we used to delegate, that used to happen automatically have to be brought up into the conscious brain.

We have to utilize a lot more energy to think through things and make decisions. And the brain doesn’t like that because it can’t be as efficient as it used to be. And so some of that negative emotion that you’re experiencing as you go through change is completely normal. This is because your brain works so well. This is because you’re a human being having a human experience. So instead of thinking, I should be handling this better, just try on, this is completely normal.

Alright, strategy number two is to shorten your lens. Now, again, your amazing brain already does this automatically in many cases. So, for example, let’s imagine that you’re driving in the car and you’re driving down the road and suddenly another car crosses the center line and starts to head towards your car.

Well, if that accident is occurring, your brain immediately shortens the lens into what do we need to do to survive right now? It causes you to swerve out of the way or to do whatever is necessary to try to protect yourself.

Your brain shortens your lens to what’s going to happen in the next five seconds. You stop wondering what you’re going to make for dinner, you stop feeling guilty about that thing you did yesterday. You shorten your lens to what’s happening right now.

And again, it’s the amygdala kicking in, that amygdala attack. But you can help your brain do this in other situations. Okay, so we have that desire to focus on the present to survive, but then we also have a part of the brain that wants to think about the future because it thinks, in some way, that’s preventative and in some way that can protect you and prevent negative emotion or disaster of some sort.

So we sort of have to balance those two and choose our lens length appropriately. So one of the things I’m always telling my clients, when they’re in the midst of something that’s really intense or really emotional, if your change is a big emotional change – again, perhaps you’ve lost a loved one, a relationship has ended, something like this that’s probably not a change that you wanted, although maybe it is a change you wanted.

Maybe all of your kids graduated and left the house and you kind of wanted that, but now you’re really also struggling with the emotion that you’re creating in that situation, right? So if it’s highly emotionally charged, your lens needs to be shorter. Instead of thinking, what am I going to do next year, what am I going to do in the next 10 years…

I remember I had a client who said, “My marriage is really challenging and I know that marriages are eternal, but to be honest, the idea of being in this marriage for eternity sounds terrible.” And I said to my clients, “What if we don’t worry about the eternities yet? What if we just decide what you want to do this week in your marriage? What if we just even maybe think about this month is all for now, because there was so much emotion and so much discomfort and so much challenge,” I said, let’s just shorten your lens and not worry about the eternities. Let’s just think about who you want to be, what you want to do with regards to your marriage this month, this week, or even today, you guys.

Sometimes, your lens needs to be shortened to just the next few hours. Maybe if I can just get through breakfast. Maybe if I can just get myself out the door to that thing I want to do today. And we don’t worry about what’s going to happen tonight and we don’t worry about tomorrow even. We bring the lens length in and the brain will do a much better job of helping you navigate what’s happening right now in the present moment.

Now, eventually we will lengthen your lens in other areas, but I’m talking about something challenging that you’re going through. Bring that lens in closer. I love the idea that worry is just a misuse of your imagination. So if you’re worrying, you probably need to bring your lens in closer.

Alright, let’s talk about strategy number three. Strategy number three is to minimize decisions where possible. Remember, we talked about that when change occurs, the brain doesn’t like it because it has to work really hard. And one of the things that requires a lot of brain power, a lot of brain energy, is decisions that we make.

And so the reason change feels so overwhelming, one reason, is because of decision fatigue. Every time we have to make a decision, we can’t delegate that to the lower brain. We have to use the higher brain to make decisions. And the higher brain gets tired. It requires so much more energy.

So, let’s take moving as an example. When you move to a new city, you now have to figure out where to grocery shop. And when you go to the grocery store, you have to figure out where the things are that you like to buy because you knew them in your old grocery store and now you have to figure it all out.

And you have to make a decision about where you’re going to go and what you’re going to buy. And you have to make decisions about where you’re going to go on your walk and all the things that used to be routine now require effort and energy and some decision-making.

So, one way that you can minimize your decisions where possible is to ease up a little bit on your expectations of yourself. Maybe you’re not going to go for a walk today, or maybe you’re not going to get to all the things that you used to get to when you could delegate everything to the lower brain.

Ease up a little. Once your kids go off to school for the day, then you have to make decisions now about what to do with your time, whereas when your kids lived at home, when you had little ones at home, you didn’t have to make a bunch of decisions, they sort of made them for you.

So that decision fatigue often kicks in for my clients, once all of their kids start school or all of their kids leave home. What am I going to do with my time?

Now, another way to minimize decision fatigue is to make your decisions in advance. Instead of waiting until Monday morning at 9:15 when all the kids are gone to school, decide in advance, maybe Sunday evening you decide what you’re going to do with your week or what you’re going to do with your mornings.

Decide in advance when the moment isn’t there and the pressure feels heavy and your brain starts thinking there’s a right or wrong thing to do. And then, when the time comes, stick to your decision and don’t second guess them because that is so draining.

Another thing I like to do is to delegate decisions as much as possible. I do this all the time, even when I’m not in the midst of change. But I might ask my kids, hey, each of you pick one thing you want to have for dinner this week. And they choose it and that way that’s one less decision I have to make.

Ask your husband to make some of the decisions for you. Ask other people. Now, this does require that you let go of control of things, but if you can manage that side of you, you can save a lot of energy my minimizing your decisions. Even when you have a child who is struggling in some way, you can decide in advance how you will handle it when the child struggles, if there’s a pattern. And this will minimize decision fatigue.

Alright, strategy number four is to allow yourself to feel your feelings. I talk about this a lot. If you’re in my coaching program, you hear me coach people a lot on being willing to feel feelings. But this is really powerful when you’re navigating a change because there will be emotions and I recommend that you lean into them.

So one of the concepts that I love that I learned from Martha Beck is this idea that we have clean pain and dirty pain. And I want you to allow and feel any feeling that you feel. So this isn’t about saying this is dirty pain, I don’t need to feel it. But I love the idea that there is clean pain in life and there are emotions that we would even choose to feel, even if we take a look at our thoughts about them.

They’re the emotions that are appropriate. They’re the emotions that come from thoughts that we want to keep. They’re part of the human experience.  So when I’m going through change, there’s going to be a lot of clean pain. It’s all these things I’m telling you about. It’s the discomfort of something new. It’s the decisions that have to be made.

And allowing the overwhelm, allowing the sadness, allowing the grief, allowing all the pain that comes from the experience and then the thoughts we want to have about it is a really important part of navigating change with peace.

So, in order to do this, we have to be willing to feel a feeling instead of resisting or buffering from that feeling. We have to relax into that feeling. We have to – again, if you’re in Be Bold, you know that we teach you how to do this start to finish and I have a lot of other podcast episodes you can go check out on this. But being willing to feel your feelings is a super critical part of most of the change that you’re going to experience in your life.

Alright, strategy number five is to become future-focused instead of past-focused. So when we’re navigating change, the brain really wants to go to the past. The past is always easier to think about than the future, but especially in times of change, especially if this is a change that you didn’t really ask for or that you really don’t want.

The brain will want to go back to all of the things that were so amazing about the past, and in fact, it will become even more amazing than what it was when we were there. And it will want to emphasize and replay. Maybe it will want to question what we could have done to prevent this or where did things go wrong.

It’s very, very tempting for the brain to live in the past when we are in the midst of change. The future, on the other hand, is a blank slate. The future, we have nothing to draw from. The future requires our imagination in a much more challenging way than worry. The future is just too broad for our brains to really get traction over unless we direct it intentionally.

So when you think about the past and you think about how much you wish that were still the way it is or you think about how things went wrong, you’re just going to recreate more problems. You’re going to keep yourself stuck. Think about the past as it’s sort of weighing you down.

But if you’re willing to let go of that and think about the future, now we have the ability to start to create a different future. The truth is, we create what we focus on. That’s just human nature.

So, like, I’ve had clients who are going through a divorce that they didn’t want to see happen. Their spouse filed for divorce, and so they get stuck in this trap of the way things were and painting a rosy picture of the past. And they also get stuck in trying to figure out where they went wrong or what they could have done to prevent it, so they get stuck in a lot of regret in this past that’s dragging them down.

And what I tell them is, listen, we’re going to change the channel on the TV program you’re watching. Instead of replaying the past and what went wrong, let’s just decide nothing has gone wrong. Let’s think about the future instead. What do you want your future to be with regards to your family, your relationships, your job, your life, what you do every day?

It’s a very challenging question because the brain doesn’t want to let go of the past. But the future is within our control. We are creating our future whether we think about it or not. The past is, of course, in the past. And we can’t go change it. And so arguing with it really serves no purpose.

I have said this before, but I’ll say it again; I think this is why Heavenly Father asked us to pray in the way that we do where we first give gratitude and thanks for all the things that we like that we want to keep in our lives, because focusing on those things with gratitude will create them again. And then we talk about what we think we want or need for their future. Because focusing on what we want and need instead of what we don’t want, what we regret, what we’re worried about creates a different future for us.

Okay, strategy number six is to be compassionate with yourself. Because of all these things happening in the brain when we go through change, we may not be at our best. You might not. Like I said, you may not go exercise every day like you used to before.

You might even be a version of you that you don’t really want to be. Maybe you’re not as kind to people. Maybe you’re less patient. Maybe you’re a little bit grumpier. Hating yourself for behaving that way serves no purpose. There is zero upside to it. You cannot hate yourself better. You have to love yourself better. You have to be compassionate with yourself.

Now, sometimes my clients say, “Well, then I’m just going to let myself of the hook, is that what you’re saying? I’m just going to excuse bad behavior?” And I’m saying no, what we do when we hate ourselves is we move into shame. Shame says something’s wrong with me, I’m sorry, I’m a mistake. Guilt says, I did something that I don’t want to do, I don’t want to repeat going forward, I made a mistake.

Guilt can be useful, but most people don’t stay in guilt, they go from guilt right into shame. Shame is toxic. Shame is not necessary. So when you’re in the midst of change, I want you to remember that your brain is freaking out a little. You’re navigating a lot. You’re having to make a lot of decisions. There’s a lot of unknown. There’s a lot of new. The brain thinks this is all very scary.

All of these protective mechanisms that are wired in us as healthy humans are going to make it challenging for you to always be at your best. Be kind to yourself, and from kindness, you’re much more likely to improve.

Okay, the seventh and last strategy I want to offer to you is to be open to the growth that’s available to you because, here’s the truth; change is how we grow. We have to go through challenges; sometimes challenges that we’ve invited and sometimes challenges that we didn’t invite. But always, those challenges are what give us the opportunity to grow.

A friend of mine in a ward I lived in, in California, told this amazing story about his son who had leukemia. And I want to say, his son was about eight or nine years old and he’s in the hospital with his son who is going through treatment for leukemia, which I can only imagine what that must feel like for both the father and the son.

But his boy was sick. He was throwing up all night. He was just really struggling. He was in the depths of the treatment and all the things that this was taking a toll on his body. And the son says to the dad one night, “Dad, why do we have to do this?”

And his dad said, “You know what, hon’, I don’t know. All I know is that we have two choices here. We can use this experience to become bitter or we can use this to become better, what do you want to do?” And, of course, his son said, “Dad, I think we should become better through it.”

Now, I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying you need to beat yourself up if you’re feeling bitter right now. What I’m saying is that’s what’s available to us and it’s the only way that we strengthen ourselves mentally, emotionally, and sometimes spiritually. Just like if I want to strengthen my muscles, I have to lift heavy weights so that my muscles break down and come back stronger, as humans, we have to be broken down emotionally, spiritually, mentally in order to come back stronger. This is what the atonement is for, right? This is why we have the atonement.

Now, one final thought I’m going to give you here that I like to think about with regards to this and just sort of kind of manage my brain to try to get to peace is we have Christ’s example and we have the crucifixion and the resurrection. And for those of you who might not be members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints like I am, let me just mention that we are a Christian religion, but we don’t have crosses on our church and we don’t really wear crosses around our neck.

And that’s not because we don’t believe similar things to most of the religions that do have crosses. It’s just because we focus more on the resurrection, right? But here’s the truth; without the crucifixion, there was no need for the resurrection.

And I like to ask myself, okay, the way I’m thinking about this problem or the way I’m thinking about this change, the way I’m thinking about what’s going on, is it more in line with crucifixion or resurrection? Is it a focus on the problem? Is it a focus on resisting reality? Or is it a focus on the miracles that surround the problem? Is it a focus on solution?

Is it a focus on the opportunity to use the atonement and to release my desire to control everything around me and to surrender to God’s will?  That’s where we find peace. It doesn’t mean it’s comfortable. It doesn’t mean it’s easy. It only means that change equals growth.

So, keep these seven strategies in mind. Take a look at them when you’re experiencing change. I want to make sure that you guys know that we now have full transcripts available for these podcast episodes. So, if you want a transcript, go to jodymoore.com and click on podcasts and access it through the website. You will find full show notes and transcripts there. And I hope this helps you navigate any change you’re going through in your life. I will see you next time. Take care

If you have a question about something you’ve heard me talk about on this podcast or anything else going on in your life, I want to invite you to a free public call, Ask Jody Anything. I will teach you the main coaching tool I use with all of my clients and the way to solve any problem in your life, and we will plug in real life examples.

Come to the call and ask me a question anonymously or just listen in. Go to jodymoore.com/askjody and register before you miss it. I’ll see you there.