Hello and welcome to my newsletter! I’m Jor-El and I’m a therapist and author of The Shadow Work Workbook and Self-Care for Black Men, which is out November 7 AND now available for preorder! I’m here to share my perspectives on life, mental health, and self-compassion. Thanks for being here!
I do not like change. I’m a big fan of routine. The more time I spend with people in conversation, I realize there are many more of us than there are of the other side. Most people struggle with change, and that’s why I thought it important to reflect on in this week’s newsletter.
Relationship to Self & Change
Odds are if you’ve ever talked about making some adjustment in your life and sought counsel from friends or loved ones, you’ll recognize that most folks (just as I previously mentioned) find themselves polarized at either extreme regarding change. Most folks always push back against change and adjustment, while others seize the continuous fluidity of change. For the latter, change is innervating. It’s exciting to regularly change course and take risks. For the former, change is often related to difficult moments for us in which our lives have felt out of our own control.
Change is scary.
These two perspectives also come with a sense of self, a personality stereotype even. Change-makers are often seen as gregarious, brash and adventurous. By contrast, change-avoiders are often seen as more stable, subtle and cautious. In my experience, I find this to mostly be true. Stereotypes exist for a reason.
However, “every rose has it thorns.”
If you’re a change-maker, the liability is that you forego planning and stability to potentially garner a great reward. That means experiencing a more chaotic lifestyle, even at your own detriment sometimes. If you’re a change-avoider, then you likely favor stability and security, while often giving up the upper limits of your personal potential.
At both ends, your relationship to change can be representative of a deep sense of self.
What does your perspective on change say about you?
And this limiting of potential, I think, is what gives change-avoiders such a hard time. This is especially true if you’re dealing with general nervousness or fear, or a mental health condition related to anxiety and/or depression.
And that’s where things get a bit trickier…
The Motivation to Change
Motivation represents our willingness to move forward to either embrace and create change. When you lack motivation, you reject change. When you deal with a personal distaste for change or struggle with mental health issues like anxiety and depression, change is often harder that it may first seem. These barriers, unfortunately, can create a negative feedback loop as you entrench yourself in self-critical thoughts about how you 1) should embrace change and 2) are somehow messed up for not being able to move forward with said change.
You feel defeated. You moralize your difficulty with change. You personalize the difficulty in taking risks. Your self-esteem suffers.
All the while you’ve never stopped to think beyond the internalized expectations of others. The pressure can be suffocating. Pressure can be de-motivating too.
The Keys to Embracing Change?
As a self-identified lover of routines, I know it can be hard to embrace change. But, I think that getting better at it relies on two things 1) honest self-reflection, and 2) acceptance. Here are two questions that may help you on your path towards embracing more change:
Do I find value in what can be on the other side of this change?
How can I move forward whether this change goes the way I want it to or not?
Whether you’re a change-maker or a change-avoider, these questions can help you make more mindful moves forward…whether change is easy for you or not.