Weekend Engagement - Coping Better With Change

Do you feel that you resist change? If yes then explain why.

After a brief hiatus, I am back for Weekend Engagement!

Hmm I feel that such questions have no straightforward answers, because it really depends. And I am not being evasive of course. But if I am "forced" to give a yes/no answer, I definitely resist change and people around me would easily attest to that.

The simple reason is, nobody likes change, right?

Imagine you already made a reservation for dinner date at a fancy restaurant, and when you turn up, you were told there were no available seats due to overbooking and you had to wait an hour more? Imagine you booked your flights and planned your travel itinerary, but then the flights got postponed or cancelled because of geopolitical events? Imagine you made plans to get some exercise at the gym after work or to celebrate your friend's birthday over a dinner, but just as you were packing up for the day, your boss said there was an urgent assignment and you needed to stay back, causing you to miss your exercise or your friend's birthday celebration? I am sure we can all think of more examples but the message is clear. Changes are always going to be disruptive.

So, the more important question is, how comfortable are we when coping with these changes?

Some people can handle changes well, either trying to spin the change from a negative one to a positive one, or just laugh it off and accept that it's a way of life. Then there are also some people who would descend into a "doom and gloom" mood, blaming people or things for how things turned out, or complaining/whining how unfair life has treated them.

What about me?

I think I used to be very resistant and let these changes affect my mood. Maybe because of my personality (there are some personality tests that one can do to know what kind of a person you are), or maybe I am a serious planner and everything needs to go according to the plan.

But as I grew older, maybe it's an age thing (one year older, one year wiser, right?), or maybe there's just too many things to juggle, I find that it's less suffocating if I could "drop" some aspects of life, and just juggle the more important stuff. Of course, this is easier said than done. It required a mindset change on my part, such as being able to accept that things will go wrong once in a while, and it's perfectly okay (it's not the end of the world after all). And when things eventually go wrong, learn some lessons, try not to let them happen again, and we move on with life and not let myself get moody about it.

And I think having such mindset have lightened my burdens and I have gradually become more optimistic and happier, and in an unusual way, I find that I have been able to cope with changes better.

Do I still resist change? Yes of course, maybe not as much as when I was younger. :)

So that's all I have this week! Ending off with a "Thank You" to my readers - it caught me by surprise that the Starbucks barista actually took the effort to do this to brighten customers' day!