change

Do you feel like you’re going nowhere?

If someone asked you where are you heading, what would your reply be? Might it be going nowhere? That’s not intended as a frivolous question, though many right now might feel tempted to reply with variations around “get lost!”. It could be something around, “don’t ask me questions I can’t answer”. Because such is the state of the world right now that there don’t seem to be answers and many people feel incredibly uncertain and anxious about the future, and even focusing on the immediate can be really hard work and tiring. What’s your state of the world? In the … Read more

Has change just disrupted your view of the world?

How much are you being affected by change and uncertainty right now? Both in and outside of the UK many people are thinking their lives have been turned upside down recently due to the Brexit vote. It’s not necessarily about the politics but more the impact on their lives and their plans. It’s like a major event has serious disruptive results. This isn’t the only kind of change that disrupts our settled view of the world. Change occurs for us in all sorts of ways, some welcome, some less so. You might be getting divorced, you might have lost someone, … Read more

Change invites us to change our attitude

It is often remarked that the one constant in life is change. So it is perhaps remarkable that it is also one thing so many of us resist. People tell me how they dislike change and wish things would remain as they are, not necessarily noticing that they themselves are changing, as are the people around them and also their surroundings. It can be sudden and immediate and it can be slow and subtle, almost invisible. Curiously change is built-in to our way of life. Many advocate and welcome it, seeing advantage in something being new, as contrasted with the … Read more

New start or same old stuff and not moving forward?

Are you looking forward to a new start with eager anticipation, or do you find you’re quickly back where you were, with the same old stuff going on and you’re no further forward? It can be a hard one, as everybody else can seem all fired up and we aren’t. Who likes to be a party pooper? And so we suffer in silence. This can be a seasonal thing for many of us,  like a new year supposedly brings new hopes and yet we can still feel we’ve got the same problems. It’s even like positive thinking is for others … Read more

Time to have those change conversations

It’s holiday season and many of us are now headed to nice places on long-anticipated breaks. Despite the desire to de-stress and get some leisure and family time it can often also be time to think and reflect on where you’re going in life too. We might seemingly need to leave work well behind us, and yet for those for whom work hasn’t been so good recently, or that simply the change signals are cropping up, we might have some questions to ponder on. That long-needed break can be when we can just allow our minds to wonder more creatively … Read more

Does change make you feel anxious or optimistic?

As things change, there can be a point of poignancy when there’s perhaps an awareness of regret for what is going and mixed feelings about what is to come. Autumn is one such time. We’re in this time of autumn here in the UK where the trees are turning golden brown, almost red, and leaves are piling up on the ground, in gutters and on pavements. The air is damp with a chill in the air and the grass is wet with dew in the mornings. Depending on how you are feeling, walking among trees can be a bit sad … Read more

Getting that you are going through change in your life

Getting that you are going through a change in your life can be the hard part. Humans can be fundamentally very conservative creatures and we a lot of us don’t like change. Particularly at the moment with such a sense of insecurity in the air. We don’t see what’s really going on till we’re  right in the thick of it and things aren’t going as we’d like. Change can come in clusters, and this can be a clue that it’s more fundamental. So if I take midlife crisis as an example, as described in the last post, we might experience … Read more

Midlife crisis needs to be embraced not denied

Those who haven’t experienced it often express amazement or cynicism about the difficult transition men in particular can go though in their late ’30’s and early ’40’s. The cynics call it a “midlife crisis”, although that’s a misnomer since mid-life in the advanced industrialised countries is arguably now somewhat later and also that some experience this transition even in their early ’30’s. In fact it has been calculated that the suicide risk for men goes up markedly after the age of 30. So, just as you might be thinking as you reach for the mouse that “I don’t need this” … Read more

In adversity it’s time to get resourceful

With lots of change going on in the work-place, people will very likely be finding things difficult, especially as for lots of people at present the workplace is very stressful, along with financial cutbacks. As we’ve discussed in this blog, change often comes to people in bunches. They’ve got lets say a change at work when parallel to this is a lot happening on the home front too. Or a parent dies and you’ve just split up with a partner and been told you’ve got a serious illness. Flexibility is a hard one if you’re confronted with a change you … Read more

We can move on

It is curious, were it not also so painful, to see how absorbed we can get in our own misery. It gets a perverse fascination, such that we keep on and on at it, even though we know, in part, that it doesn’t do us any good. I was reading a story about that great mythical Indian character, Sheikh Nasruddin. Stories about him are often told by gurus, to illustrate a point they are making. Here’s one from Swami Muktananda. Sheikh Nasruddin had noticed people buying chillies in a market and had seen that they were very popular. In fact … Read more