Change is good, change is challenging. We all need change to stimulate us and progress our lives, otherwise we risk getting stuck in a boring life routine. However, how you react to change is key to whether it becomes a positive or a negative experience. Answer these questions to see how good you are at coping with change:
- Do you have a fixed routine to your life?
- Do you hate changes in this routine? For instance, it upsets you if the cafe you usually have coffee in has closed for the day, or the supermarket has moved the items you normally buy to another aisle.
- Do you get flustered if someone asks you to do something on the spur of the moment?
- Have you got the same friends you’ve had for years, with no new ones?
- Do you rely on other people to do the same thing at the same time, just as you do, and get upset when they are unreliable?
- Do you worry about things changing around you, for instance the local cinema becoming a leisure centre?
- Do you worry that you won’t be able to cope if things change?
If you have answered ‘yes’ to the majority of these questions, then change is obviously difficult for you, and makes you anxious, perhaps raising questions of inadequacy. You have regulated your life as much as you can to create a feeling of security, but you might be very vulnerable if this routine were upset. Try to introduce an element of change, however small, into your daily life. Walk a different way to the Tube, buy a new variety of fruit, make a new friend, try a different newsÂpaper. When you know you can cope with small changes, the bigger ones become less threatening.