I’ve been involved in juggling some personal details this past week, sloshing around in the realm of change.  What I’ve found has been the most helpful companion along the way this week has been to continually remind myself that what feels new and confusing at the moment will be second nature by next month.  I find that when I’m faced with stress, offering myself some kind of realistic reassurance, or at least a reminder that I eventually do adapt to change, helps to a surprising degree.

I’ve noticed that when I forget to talk to myself about my ability to adapt to change, I have a tendency to get grumpy, to jump to conclusions, and to generally go around being more irritable and overwhelmed than I actually need to be.  When I remember the support I receive from talking myself down, from reassuring myself that all will be well, and talking to myself about possibilities instead of impossibilities, things improve almost immediately.

For this week’s experiment, I invite you to explore your relationship to change and stress, and to see what works best for you and what doesn’t help when you’re faced with a new learning, an unexpected change, an added task, a loss – whatever kind of change faces you at the moment.

As I’ve said so many times in these experiments, while we can’t do much about what comes our way, we do have some say in how we move through what we encounter in day-to-day life.  Perhaps the most immediately available source of soothing that we carry with us all the time is our internal dialogue, the self-talk that accompanies us throughout most of our experiences, if not all.  This experiment is, in part, an exercise is tracking your automatic internal dialogue and deciding if what you’re saying to yourself helps you adapt and be more flexible, or adds to your stress and squeezes your ability to move through what comes your way.

For example, what’s the most likely thing you tell yourself when you run into an obstacle?  Do you move into an overwhelm conversation with yourself, where you say things like, “Oh no, now this will never work.”  Or, “I’ll never figure this out.”  What happens in your body when you hear this kind of internal dialogue?  Do you notice that you become tighter, more constricted?  On the other hand, if you say things like, “Oh, this will all sort itself out in time,” or, “I don’t understand this right now, but I will make sense of it eventually,” what happens internally?  Do you notice that your body settles down a bit, maybe even softens a little and that you tend to feel a little less overwhelmed and helpless? 

As you explore this week’s experiment, notice the intimate relationship between your internal dialogue and your level of stress when it comes to encountering change.  Even in the most challenging of circumstances, what you say to yourself becomes a crucial element in how you move through the experience.  Your inner dialogue is your friend.  Your self-talk is a powerful companion along the way, and it helps to practice listening in to hear the kinds of messages you give yourself and then deciding whether what you hear helps – and you want to keep it, or adds to your stress – and you want to change it.

Remember to bring along curiosity as your constant companion.  The presence of curiosity immediately shifts your body state and your state of mind, because curiosity opens us up to experience, whereas fear constricts and closes us to experience.  Also, remember to pat judgments on the head as they arise, and gently let them continue on their way, right on out of conscious awareness.