7 Tips To Deal With Change, Stress, & Starting Over

If you’re a regular reader of the Blog, you've probably noticed that for the last few weeks, I haven’t been writing as often. Apologies! I’ve been focusing on a project that I can't wait to share with you! 

So when it came time to write this post, a few things came to mind:

1. What the F@#$ do I write about?
2. Starting a habit after stopping really sucks.
3. How do people ACTUALLY dust themselves off and start again?

And then it hit me.

I’d write a blog post about writing a blog post. Not literally, of course. That would be confusing!

Instead, here are the

7 Step-by-Step Tools I Used to Deal with Change, Conquer Stress, and Start Over:

1. Stop resisting it. When we’re screaming “no” (internally or externally), we unwittingly make things harder. Change sucks, but resisting it makes it suck more. You can’t move forward until you accept the reality of your current situation.

2. Accept impermanence. Habits are habits until they aren’t. No matter how still your image of yourself, another person, or a situation may be, it continues to change. In fact, regardless of how you perceive something at this moment, the thing itself is changing. Stress comes from trying to force things to be consistent and static instead of accepting that they aren’t. Simply put, stress comes from how you deal, not what you’re dealing with.

3. Acknowledge that change sucks. Admitting that something is challenging helps you to validate your own feelings. As Dr. Crum, Stanford University Psychology Professor notes, “Doing so changes the stress in your brain, moving it from the reactive amygdala to the more rational prefrontal cortex.”

4. Discharge it. Option 1: Call your brother at midnight to vent (Yup, just did that), or the less dramatic Option 2: Write out your best and worst-case scenarios on paper in order to clearly develop a rational plan. There’s something about seeing our crazy in black and white that makes us put on our big girl pants and get shit done.

5. Use the stress response proactively. Instead of letting it crush you, use it to help you adapt. What can you do differently next time? What’s the hidden lesson? Use stress as a helpful guide, rather than your enemy.

6. Be gentle. Have some self-compassion. Increase your self-care and trust that when everything is up in the air, it will come back together more beautiful, organized, and aligned than before. 

7.  Ice cream. A warm baguette also does quite nicely.

P.S. Speaking of Starting Over, join me for an exclusive interview with Divorce Coach, Heather Debreceni, for a special Dating Edition of the Empowered Divorce Summit. It starts on September 7th, click here to check it out!