Four Ways To Master Change

We are living in an exciting age of unprecedented change. Today's accelerated rate of change presents us with unique challenges and opportunities. When change brings success, keep your ego from getting out of hand. When the change is negative, use your sense of humor to get through it. Once you learn to handle change, you can take your skills, talents, and abilities and help others change.
Let's look at four ways to enhance your mastery of change.
NO. 1 DON'T FIGHT IT. The natural tendency is to protect what you know and value, what has become familiar and comfortable. Unfortunately the world will change with or without you. So you must adapt again and again. You make your life so much more complicated when you fight the change. You cause yourself stress and can actually become ill. Remember the old Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
NO. 2 YOU DON'T HAVE TO LIKE THE CHANGE. No one ever said you have to like the changes you are experiencing. However, you do have to understand them so you can progress.Study, explore, and read everything you can about the current matters that affect your perception and handling of change. Life is not always about "liking". It is about doing the best you can, with what you you've got and getting on with it--right now!
NO. 3 KNOW WHAT TO DEFEND AGAINST CHANGE. There are some things we should resist changing because change does not always translate into better. Change for the sake of change alone can destroy valuable situations, assets, and relationships. Many values deserved to be defended. Ask yourself what you will change and what you will defend.
NO. 4 HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR. Humor can give you a momentary "emotional vacation." A sense of humor can conquer pretense, and diffused anger and hostility. It can take an impossible situation and change it into an acceptable one. The old axiom, "if you take yourself too seriously, no one else will," is key. The most effective people are spontaneous and can use humor to express their feelings, and to encourage others.
When you set out to be a change master and to make a difference in this world, there is no guarantee that it will be easy. By learning about change, serving others and helping them to learn to change, you will indeed be making a difference.

by Sheila Murray Bethel