I often resist and don’t like change. I still grieve my children leaving home, and that was many years ago. I miss the companies I founded and the teams I created. I miss traveling and I’m tired of this pandemic. I look in the mirror and wonder what happened to the 35-year old me. So much change. I sometimes joke that I’d like to start a support group called Buddhists Against Change. (This is a particularly unique and ironic support group, since embracing change and impermanence is a foundational Buddhist principle.)
We often resist change. Some neuroscience studies indicate that a lack of certainty registers in our brains in our pain centers. Thus, in some very gross ways, change equals pain. It often feels that way to me.
Regina Pally is a neuroscientist who wrote a paper called The Predicting Brain. In it she states:
“Even before events happen, the brain has already made a prediction … and sets in motion the perception, behaviors, emotions, psychological responses, and interpersonal ways of relating that best fit with what is predicted. … We learn from the past what to predict for the future and then live the future we expect.”
That is, we expect the world to stay the same, or at least to be predictable. It’s not. In truth, in reality, nothing stays the same. This moment, this now, is different than the now when I began writing the sentence. Our bodies, minds, and emotions are constantly changing.
Of course, our ability to attempt to predict the future is essential – in running our businesses and in running our lives. When we walk toward a door, our hand expects and knows where the door knob is; our feet expect the floor to be where we place them. We look at sales and expense patterns and count on the predictions we make. We love predicting the future. We resist change.
So, what about when the unexpected happens – like a fire, or a pandemic, like being hired or fired, like any unexpected or unplanned gains, losses, or interruptions?
What about our children growing up, loss, old age, sickness, and death? This is where not only Buddhism, but most religions start – facing change, engaging with a dynamic, unpredictable body, mind, relationships, work, and universe.
What are some effective practices and strategies for working with change?
Meditation could be described as the practice of shifting our relationship with change. It’s the practice of living more in reality, lessening our predictions, and opening to whatever happens. Shunryu Suzuki suggests that when we exhale, we do not predict that it will be followed by another inhale. It’s a way of completely giving up, completely accepting that we don’t know what will happen, and to become more and more comfortable with this reality.
This is a simple and profound practice. With each breath, not knowing, letting go of what will happen next, and training ourselves to not resist, not run away, not be afraid of not knowing.
Our lives these days, with the pandemic, with climate change, with the constant changes brings up the image for me that each of us is in a small boat in a large and turbulent ocean. It feels dangerous and unpredictable. Someone needs to stay calm and focused — calm in the midst of the turbulence, and focused on finding solutions. And one calm and focused person can be contagious, can help everyone on the boat to be more calm and more focused.
I find this image immensely and immediately useful in work, in leadership, in all our relationships in life — being in a small boat in a turbulent sea.
Let’s all practice with a healthy relationship with change. More acceptance, less resistance, less predicting everything will stay the same. Less blaming and railing against change, against what is. Let’s all work to be that calm and focused person in the boat, navigating turbulent waters.
And, let’s explore a practice, to help you to shift your relationship with change.
The practice is: NOW Notice. Own. Widen Your Perspective
Notice the change. Notice that everything changes, moment to moment.
Own the changes. Let go of resisting or pretending that things stay the same. Let go of blaming the situation for changing or being difficult or challenging. Let go of blaming other people. This can be a really difficult one. Try on owning what your contribution is to whatever situation you find yourself in. It’s not your fault, and it is your responsibility.
Widen your perspective. See yourself, others, the world as though you are looking in from a distance. In this way you can accept and even celebrate change and how change makes everything more valuable, more precious. Appreciate each moment. This moment. Now this moment.