DEAL WITH IT

To improve is to Change, to be Perfect is to change often. Winston Churchill

Change is inevitable, yet, most of the times, change is frustrating; having to leave a school that you know everyone and everything in to join a new one, having to change your laptop, your car, in order to buy a new one, changing work in either a promotion or a quit. With all the progress and light that these changes promise you, the thought of change itself still always holds a considerable amount of discomfort.

As everything we do in patterns result with a habit, flexibility, perhaps the best tool to manage change, is a habit that you can develop by practice. This habit of remaining open-minded and adaptable to new information and situations can make you form a pattern of positive reactions by looking for the opportunity in each “frustrating” and “upsetting” situation, and spotting what’s best for you in it.

Usually, it’s those people who can remain calm and keep their minds functioning consciously in the middle of an unexpected crash or problem that are considered to be superior.

They take a deep breath, relax, and weigh the situation accurately. They keep themselves calm and unemotional by asking questions and seeking information when things don’t work out as they expected.

Ineffective people have a tendency to be in a reactive-responsive mode of behavior much of the time. Instead of consciously and deliberately choosing their courses of action, they react to what is going on around them, and they respond to their emotions, sometimes blowing up and sometimes becoming depressed. They ride an emotional roller coaster. And the very best they can hope for, in this mode of behavior, is to get back to even, where they were before they became upset. The Path of Least Resistance, Robert Fritz.

According to Fritz, the superior person concentrates his attention on his “future vision.” Whenever an unexpected change or setback occurs, the superior person immediately focuses his mind on where he wants to be at a future time. This future vision is something that he has planned and given a lot of thought to, so it is fairly easy to conjure up at a moment’s notice.

When everyone around them are drowning into skeptical investigations about who to blame, and formatting the perfect scenario for the conspiracy that might be tailored for them, Superior people tend to ask, “what do we do now?”, “Where do we go from here?”. They

keep themselves performing at their best by thinking and talking about a desired future

state. Focus your attention on the future, and you can greatly improve your ability to deal with change.

Think about any stressful situation you had in the near or far past, what was mostly the reason you felt frustrated? Most of your stress, sadness, and irritation comes from the fact that you were not in control at that particular moment or situation, or in any particular area of your life; the critical issue in dealing with change is the subject of control.

On the other hand, if you recall the times and places you felt the very best about yourself are those that you were in full control.

Home Sweet home is a perfect example of the above, it is that moment you reach the place where and when you are in full control, especially after a long journey of losing it. When you were outside, you felt you were in lack of control, as if you were moved by external forces, namely traffic, silly drivers, pedestrians, and of course running behind schedule.

Feeling back in control brings comfort and enjoyment, it is like that moment when you have finished an exam, or an assignment, or a project, and you feel like you are back in charge of your life.

 

Ultimately, in order to deal with change, you have to be always in full charge over the things you think about, which should come from your conscious mind since it is the only thing over which you have complete control.

Since change is inevitable and continuous, it is how you think about what is happening to you that is most important in determining how change affects you, and whether you use it to your advantage or let it work to your disadvantage. Brian Tracy

So what type of change do we fear? Is there an exclusive type of change that brings all the discomfort and fearful feelings in us? Indeed, there is; we are always afraid of what we will be worse off as a result, not better off. It is change that implies unpleasant surprises that makes us anxious fearing, here it is the fear of losing control.

In his book “No Excuses”, the legendary Brian Tracy brings to practice a very practical way to face fears, he called it the disaster report, he puts steps into destroying fear almost instantly by first “Defining the worry situation clearly, being completely clear about a situation brings immediate ways of its resolution; Second, Identify the worst possible thing that could possibly happen if the worry situation were to take place. A series of “would you” questions be asked here about losing a job, a relationship or money; after asking such questions, one would find that it’s probably not worth all the worry. The third step is to resolve to accept the worst possible outcome… DEAL WITH IT if it is meant to happen, how would you manage if the worst possible came into reality, putting a solid base of resolutions and contingency plans for it. Finally, Fourth, beginning immediately to improve on the worst, like the old saying, if it ain’t broke, fix it before its broken.

Tracy’s brilliant way of dealing with fear shows that having a purposeful and disciplined action in the direction of your goals is the only cure for fear or worry.  

In this part of the world, change is ongoing, it is like our daily bread an butter, things that are completely out of anyone’s control. In order to manage change, you have to deal with it, put self-direction, write solid and specific goals that enable you to plan for change, plan for instability and control your actions while it happens. We all know that in every situation, some unexpected disappointments and setbacks will happen, this is the nature of the market, and life; sometimes you lose in spite of all the efforts, sometimes unpredictable events puts down all your eagerness and enthusiasm to achieve something, yet, only the superior people know that all these setbacks, disappointments and losses are uncontrollable, are like rain in a sunny day, and reassure their plans constantly with perseverance to fit and use them into their own benefit.

The difference between average and superior is long term planning, so no matter unexpected events happen, they can make some barriers but never drift them from their main concentration, their concrete determination of getting what they want, of reaching the solid goals they have put from the start.

Yes, most goals stay in the level of wishes and dreams, because we don’t take them and ourselves seriously, I bet 90% of the people you know had very good new year’s resolutions, but no one made the effort to write them down, or to ever revisit them again, and eventually they ended up going with the wave of changes, living in anger and worry, loss of control. Dealing with change is as constant as change itself, the moment you surrender to it, it beats you, and we all know we can’t spend our lives crying over spilled milk, unfortunately we do. 

“The last great freedom of man is the freedom to choose his attitude under any given set of circumstances”. Viktor Frankl

Take Back your Time

It might seem to be very basic and cliche that time is money, but of course we all know so and we all try to get our priorities checked throughout the day. Most of us have daily and weekly planners, have set their priorities at work and in life, and work accordingly to achieve their oriented results; the question here is, where do 80% of us fail? Why is it that last year’s resolutions are still hanging somewhere either in our minds, or at the best case on a piece of paper in some drawer, we even forget where we put them.

The answer is simple, it was once said: ”in order to get something you never had, you have to do something you never did”; what we fail to do is the not only the objective planning of our time, but also, the execution of those great plans. It’s known that on paper, all plans look great, astonishing and achievable, theory is easy, but practice is what makes it perfect, and this is the hard part.

Poet Carl Sandburg metaphoric description of time as money count said: “Time is the most valuable coin in your life. You and you alone will determine how that coin will be spent. Be careful that you do not let other people spend it for you”.

I read once a quote that said, time is the most valuable gift you can ever give to someone, indeed, it is, add to this, time cannot be bought, cannot be sold, it can only be given; so your decision on how to spend time is really a make it or break it to your life, your daily consumption of minutes and hours will reflect greatly the style and norm of your life, and it definitely makes you the person you are today.

  Some questions would reflect this on the spot, for instance:

How are you spending time at work?

Well again, we revisit that tiny little “comfort zone” of ours when evaluating time, we are what we repeatedly do, and we tend to get indulged in our daily “subconscious” routine of time wasters, and myths about tasks and importance and priorities, this majorly results from our wrong perception of priority setting and delegation.

Vilfredo Pareto’s famous 20-80 rule, is the rule of priorities that I encountered about 15 years ago, and ever since I apply it on basically everything in my life; it said that by focusing your attention on the top 20 percent of all your priorities, you would get an 80 percent return on your efforts, answering the question again “How are you spending time at work?” will reveal now what is going wrong; the amount of time you spend on others priorities, tasks to be routinely done, and of course time wasters that are all around you.

One of the major time wasters, statistically, is social networking; Facebook is the most frequently used social media platform with visitors spending an average of 6.75 hours each month browsing through its pages. Tumbler and Pinterest users spend about 1.5 hours on the media per month, while Twitter, Instagram and Google Plus visitors spend 21, 17 and 3 minutes respectively. Social networking increased from 2.7 hours to 6.9 hours over the period ranging between 2006 and 2012, while watching TV on the Internet increased from 6.3 hours to 23.1 hours. As for phone, email and mail, people used to spend 5.7 hours in 2006 but the numbers have dropped to 4.8 hours. Watching TV offline experienced the biggest drop from 71.1 hours to 59.4. When it comes to socializing in person, the time decreased from 22.8 hours to 21. Taking care of household members also decreased from 15.9 to 15.3 hours.According to surveys, only one third of workers plan their daily schedules, and only 10% of those follow through and complete what they have planned. According to time management expert Alec Mackenzie, surveys show that most executives don’t get to their most important tasks until mid-afternoon. Actually, most of the low-priority tasks get in the middle of their days schedule, and they do them to tend to get a sense of accomplishment about their days.

The above indicates the amount of time an average worker would spend on social media only, not to forget the social activities, office gossip and other interruptions and time wasters.

If you look at it from a higher perspective, we already abuse half, literally half, of our time not only by the above time wasters, but most importantly by the amount of time we spend doing things that are not only non value added, but also activities that limits our evolution.

I refer to taking back time here as to pause, think and decide on what activities you will cut off spending time on, activities that are considered to be in the loop of our daily rituals, the amount of time spent on TV, Video Games, Social Media, etc… and on the other hand, the people we interact with, the friends we surround ourselves with, the environment we indulge in. think of:

• ·        What am I spending time on daily?
• ·        What could be a better alternative for spending the same amount of time?
• ·        Who am I spending time with?
• ·        What’s in it for me? Fun, intellect, emotional satisfaction?
• ·        What and who stimulates me?

After answering the above, you’d realize the time wasted, on activities, people and thoughts, from your daily life, the same time that you can invest in; the most important question here is again:

what’s in it for you?