What to Remember When Your Life Goes South: Five Unconventional Tips to Take Advantage of Adversity & Change

What to Remember When Your Life Goes SouthrnFive Unconventional Tips to Take Advantage of Adversity & Changernby Bud Inzer We each have a constant companion in life. This companion may come as a pleasant surprise, a welcomed gift or simply as trouble. Sometimes we deliberately invite this companion but just as often, she is thrust upon us without notice or preparation. This constant companion is change. Some would say that change equals life and is life. Some of us need it while others avoid it, but even when we initiate it we feel out of control. It’s no wonder we resist it—we are creatures of habit. We like things to remain the same. Even when we initiate changes, we feel uneasy. Often we brace when it would be better to expand. Here are five unconventional tips to take advantage of change and deepen your relationship with adversity. 1. Look for Unfamiliar Solutions. If you only trust familiar answers and solutions, you are only recreating the past. In order to get a true sense what is arising, you need to step outside of your habitual ways of understanding. Look beyond where you feel safe and where you feel threatened and ask, what can this change teach me? You will begin to see that things are not happening to you but-for-you. 2. Slow Down, Wait Watchfully and Feel Your Way. Learn to surf. Hang back until you get a feel for the approaching forces, get in position, then act and make sense as you go. There is no need to panic or rush to figure things out. When everything is in motion we need to look for rhythm rather than reason. 3. Develop the Spiritual Courage to Look Deeper. When your life doesn’t match your spirit take the advice of the wise old cowboy who said, “When your horse dies, get off!” Sometimes we need a rupture in the way-things-are to get a sense of what could be. Ask yourself some new questions: What in my life has lost it’s meaning and may be time to let go of? What unlived part of me wants expression? 4. Be Willing to Act Before You Have it All Figured Out. Act now, Refine Later. In any journey, it is more important to sense the beam you are on than limit yourself to a fixed destination. When you focus only on one thing you miss others. It’s critical to know your destination when booking a vacation but to find your way through transition, it is better to meander. 5. Wander, Ponder and Learn New Things. Old dogs not only CAN learn new tricks, they MUST! Eric Hoffer said it best, “In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” There are always more opportunities than you can perceive—Always.