Accepting and Dealing with Change (Friggin’ change! COVID19)

Hi, I’m Paul Krismer, and I’m your happiness expert. In this week’s video, there’s only one promise I can give you, one and only the singular promise that I can give you in the midst of a global pandemic, and that’s just this: change will happen. You can want it, or you can resist it, but either way, it’s going to happen. I’ll tell you right now, I’m in the midst of a lot of resistance to change. My young son, who happens to be on the other end of this camera this morning, is in the Canadian military reserves, and I feel good about that most of the time. However, he’s being called up; his country wants him to serve in the COVID-19 response, and I hate it.

Some part of me, just, it’s almost biological and natural, I don’t want him to go. In the midst of all this uncertainty in the world, I want him close where I can take care of him. Of course, he’s 18. He’s totally capable, he’s got a beautiful future ahead of him, and we’re training this morning for him to get ready to go. Even though that little bit of change that’s occurring in my life is something I’m actively resisting. This video, this week’s video, is about how to create less suffering in the midst of all that change. So let’s get right to it.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So, stay tuned, and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. So, change is the only promise that we have in life. The great Eastern philosophies talked about this concept of impermanence, and these philosophies were really made by the first psychologists. Buddhist tradition, Taoism, Confucianism, and some Greek philosophers were all about this: how do we have well-being in our minds so that our experience of life is good?

The one teaching that’s so vital is that impermanence is all there is. Change is constant, and when we resist it, when we cling to the things that we want and that are starting to go away from us, or when we’re aversive, when we’re resisting what’s coming and don’t want the current reality, that’s where suffering occurs. The more we can actually deal with what’s going on in the real world, and accept it, and say yes to it, the easier our management of change is. This isn’t an easy task, it’s challenging at the best of times to say yes to what is, especially in the midst of uncertainty and changes that we don’t like, like COVID-19.

The relationships change, workplaces change, and frankly, the threat to lives, limbs, and all the human suffering that’s occurring, we resist this stuff. But it doesn’t do us any good. The suffering is in that resistance or the clinging, and the challenge for us is to not only say yes to life but to recognize that life is doing you. You’re not doing life. Life does you. It’s a journey like this one that I’m on today, and I can’t be promised that anything that I want will necessarily come from life. There might be trees down on the path that cause obstacles to what I want. There might be the river flowing too quickly, and it’s dangerous for me to cross. There might be bad weather that comes up, all kinds of things that I resist and don’t want. And that’s life doing me.

Now of course, life will also do some things that are unexpected that are great. The sun might come out and shine, the tree might provide beautiful shade, the river might be refreshing and cool when I need it. But the journey will occur with life doing you rather than you fully thinking that you’re doing life. And our society teaches a lot about how we have this power to get what we want, and if we plan and execute and take action, we’ll achieve what we want. I ascribe to that largely, but the lesson today is that we actually need to be in harmony with how life is doing us. So that’s not resisting what is, and instead, being thoughtful about how I move with what life is doing in a way that’s beneficial.

How do I learn the lesson to be my best self in the circumstances that are not the circumstances I wish they are? So that’s the basic teaching today. Rather than resisting my young son going off for some duty for the Canadian army, I’m gonna go train with him. I still don’t like everything. It’s not my preference that he go away, although a part of me is proud of him that he will. But the lesson for me is how do I be supportive and part of that with him in a way that brings my well-being and supports this young man that I love. Make sense? I hope that’s valuable for you today.

If you like this kind of content, click the like button, share it with your friends and family, and subscribe to my channel, and you’ll get a new video just like this every Sunday morning. Thanks for watching. I’m your happiness expert, Paul Krismer.