How to Navigate Changes This Upcoming Year

2022 will be quite a year for us all.

One way or another that will be the truth.

The reality is, things aren’t going to calm down for a while yet (if ever).

Our world is changing whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

The supply chain is being affected by the pandemic, and environmental changes are wreaking havoc on communities worldwide. People are leaving the workforce and starting up businesses at a pace that’s shifting the landscape for entrepreneurs and companies in all industries. Social injustices are asking all of us to step up, make sacrifices, and take a stand for what’s most important.

None of this is to scare you.

Nor to dismiss how scary it can feel either, which I totally get.

It’s to say that there will always be external circumstances impacting our lives and work in significant ways, and much of what we’ve experienced these last two years will likely continue to some degree.

So, you get to decide…

What kind of year will 2022 be for you?

Life happens in sudden and challenging ways; I know that all too well.

Deciding what kind of year you’ll have in the face of global chaos and constant, unnerving change isn’t about bypassing reality or wasting time with toxic positivity.

It’s about mastering the skills you need to navigate life in such a way that external circumstances don’t cause you to stop, stall out, or self-sabotage anymore.

So that when things happen, as they will, you stay calm and centered, engage in more productive conversations, and take action in an entirely different way that moves you forward regardless of what’s trying to hold you back.

One of the most effective ways we can do this is by learning to unhook from our interpretations and engage with only what’s happening in each moment.

Let’s look at what this means:

Essentially, something happens… things don’t go the way we want, someone tells us no, we fall short of a goal, etc. Typically what we do is have feelings about it that trigger a story. That story is an interpretation of what happened and is rooted entirely in the past or the way we believe things should be.

When this happens, it triggers our subconscious strategies for safety and security, and success and actually moves us out of the realm of being able to make impossible things happen. We’re trying to ensure things turn out the way they should, but that idea of “should” is limiting.

So instead, we need to have a different conversation with ourselves.

Something happens, and we have our feelings.

What we don’t do is tell a story about those feelings or about what happened.

We feel the raw emotion that’s there and move it through in a healthy way. We notice the story because as humans, we can’t help but be meaning-making machines, but we don’t indulge in it. We set it to the side and recognize it for what it is: a story and an interpretation rooted in the past.

All that happened is what happened.

Things didn’t go how we wanted, someone said no, a goal wasn’t met, etc. That’s it.

Once that’s set aside, we ask ourselves what’s missing.

What’s missing to move our impossible future into a reality? If something didn’t go how we wanted, what was the desired outcome, and what’s missing to fulfill it? What can we try that we haven’t? If someone said no, what were we trying to achieve by asking them? Who can we ask instead? Does their no have any helpful information or insight to help us move it to a yes? If we fell short of a goal, what is it we were trying to achieve or meet? What happened to cause us to miss the mark, and what needs to be different from now on to hit that goal?

The interpretation and story no longer hook us, and we’re no longer locked into our subconscious strategies, which frees us up to stay in our new way of being and better bridge the gap to where we want to be.

To do this effectively, we have to understand our core wound stories.

If we don’t understand them, they’re nearly impossible to see because they frame our worldview on such a fundamental level that we never stop to question what’s actually happening and what’s an interpretation.

Dig deeper into this with my Make the Impossible Happen workbook below…