Changes in your life can be very challenging

What do you do when something happens unexpectedly in your life? Do you retreat to regroup and figure out what to do next? Or react with fear? Do you find yourself at loose ends not knowing what to do next or do you adapt? Change in your life can be very challenging. This post shares how I coped with a recent change in my life to address these challenges.

Change Itself

Many of us react in one of those ways to change.  Change isn’t easy.  The change can be something new, something not so new. Change can be that certain something thats unexpected, has happened, something you didn’t want to happen or hoping wouldn’t happen. Indeed, changes in life can be very challenging.

Change can also be good. It can be something that you’ve looked forward to, or be something that you’ve hoped for. It could be something that you didn’t dare hope for, but in the back of your mind, thought it would be nice if it happened. Sometimes you know a little bit about the change that’s coming but you don’t know exactly how you’re going to handle it. 

Change in your Day to Day Life

When you do something in your work life for a number of years, it is safe to assume you do it because you like aspects of it, and/or you enjoy aspects of it. This doesn’t mean you don’t think about what a change will mean to you, or that you don’t sometimes wish for it.  You know that at some point in the future, your career will change for you. Sometimes it’s a small change. It could mean you transition to a more senior position, or that you transition to a different career.  It may also mean that you retire from that role or field.  

I’ve asked many ‘retired’ friends ‘do you enjoy your retirement?’ None have said “No I don’t. I wish I was still working.”.  What they have said is:  “I can’t believe I’m busier than when I was working;” or they say “Where did I find the time when I was working to do all these things?”. Everyone I’ve spoke with over the last few years while planning for my own change have been very candid about the planning that they did and how they made themselves ready to ensure that they were prepared for what was coming. Again, change in your life is challenging.

Planning for the Change

I started by asking myself some questions:

• Am I going to have enough to do?
• Do I have hobbies to fill my time?  and, Am I involved with them enough?  I didn’t do them while I was working so will I really spend time on them now?  
• What about all the tasks I’ve put aside over the years?

When I started thinking about what I wanted to do, I wanted to make sure that some of the things that my work did not fulfil or was unable to fulfil to the extent I wanted it to, that these things be available to me in my future.

More Exposure to Creativity

I wanted more creativity in my day to day life. Creativity comes in a lot of different packages. Being able to choose what I want to do when I want to do it and what extent I want to do it is a form of creativity. This also means the boundaries of your own routines can be expanded. Another form of creativity has been my ability to use the mediums I wanted to in order to express my creative personality without it impacting others. What I mean by that is in my work life I could work within the boundaries of expectations placed on me by others (my clients, my colleagues) but I couldn’t be as creative as I wanted to because it wouldn’t necessarily reflect well and align with expectations of my clients.  

Another form of creativity for me was the luxury of exploring my creative nature without putting parameters and constructs around it. Those who know me know I’m very habitual.   I like having routines, and I tend to fall into routines, so giving myself the freedom and the opportunity to be less bound by those parameters and structures was something I really wanted to explore.

One of the hobbies that I started exploring in more detail was writing about our travels and experiences.  I had worked in technology off and on over my years of consulting, but this was opportunity for it to be something that reflected what we enjoy in our lives. We enjoy travelling, food,  wine – lots of different things. I started to set up a website and I didn’t really think about what it would be like.  I didn’t think of an audience at the time I started this.

Embracing Change with the Blog

Our blog shares some of what we do, and what we get out of those experiences.  We already were journaling about these activities so why not a blog? It is wonderful to be able to go back and look at your pictures and your experiences.   This gives us an opportunity to better understand what we thought of an experience and how we enjoyed it. Over the course of the next 2 to 3 years we updated it as my schedule permitted. For a number of reasons – family, work and so on – I put a number of my hobbies, including this one, on the side burner. With in the last year or so as I’ve been thinking about my moving on from my consulting practice, I revisited the website and I knew I wanted to continue it in some measure.

I tend to want to go all in on something. Whenever I do something I’m going to do it to the best of my ability. I want it (whatever ‘it’ is!) to reflect me.  At the same time I want that ‘thing’ to be under my rules so it will be representative of us but not compromising on what we feel and what we’re willing to share.  

Some of the initial planning that went into this before I could jump in with both feet was how do we want it to look? What do we want to do with it? How much time am I willing to put into it and will that be enough to make it what I want it to be without compromising my time or the rest of the things I want to do? All fine questions and all took time to consider. This was one change in my life I was eager to embrace.

Other More Subtle Changes

At the beginning of this year, I started reading a book on retirement called ‘What Will I Do All Day?’ by Patrice Jenkins, PH.D. Highly recommend this ‘to the point’ book about some considerations and planning one should do prior to this type of transition. It helped me significantly in bringing together some of my thoughts and ideas about the next phase of my life journey and in better understanding how to work through some of the potential challenges. The exercises within it are fundamental!

Part of the changes for me have included being more thoughtful about what I want to do and when I want to do it. May seem like something I should have learnt ages ago. However, my career was really a focus on client needs and ensuring the right results were attained. The ‘what’ and ‘when’ were inherent in the projects. Now, these are self-determined.

It is still early days in my transition to this new reality. So far, so good. I’m enjoying the journey so far and although there are still hiccups along the path, I’m learning to navigate through them.

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