Change is inevitable and a healthy part of life, even if it sometimes doesn’t seem that way at first. It is both something important to train our minds to handle and a growth opportunity to embrace.
We often struggle to deal with change as people. It’s common to resist change when circumstances are clearly demanding a shift in thinking and behavior. It’s also common to complain that nothing ever changes while failing to change anything ourselves. Either approach is ineffective. At its core our issues with change may reflect a deep discomfort with uncertainty.
We can become much better at dealing with change and uncertainty. Our endeavors as outdoor athletes force us to contend with change and uncertainty and help us develop more responsive mindsets and greater overall comfort in shifting environments. When we are exploring nature, we constantly encounter unexpected forces (weather shifts, storms, wild animals, etc.), our equipment breaks and we must improvise, perhaps we get lost, perhaps we have an injury, etc. In these circumstances we learn to be self-reliant, we learn to grapple with issues that come up immediately, and our lives sometimes depend on this. This trains the pathways in our minds that help us respond effectively in changing circumstances. In modern civilization, we typically deal with uncertainty by attempting to assert control (or by pretending that we are in control) and by trying to remove uncertainties from our lives with technology. This works for us to a certain extent but it has its limits, and when we start to encounter these it can be quite terrifying. Common responses when our control systems hit their limits or show signs of foundational weakness seem to be paralysis, anxiety, and waiting for others to save us. It’s valuable practice for us to focus some attention on becoming more effective in dealing with change and uncertainty. As survival computers, our brains have actually evolved to be extremely good at dealing with this and we can retrain these mental pathways to a certain extent. Experience in wild environments can help us do this. It seems likely that in our lifetimes we will likely deal with far greater changes and uncertainties than are being posed by today’s circumstances. As a trainer, I view this the same way as I tend to view most things in life: a training opportunity.
Opening new chapters in our lives is challenging. It generally requires us to step beyond or let go of things that we may love or that have served us well in some way. In many cases, it forces us to let go of things where we have substantially invested ourselves. In some cases, what we are asked to let go of even seem to be baked into our identity. New chapters ask us to expand our minds.
I’ve opened and closed a number of chapters and allowed myself to evolve substantially as an athlete. The transitions have always been the most challenging area for me. It’s really difficult when activities or practices stop providing us with the same level of stimulation, no longer seem to teach us satisfying new lessons, or no longer work well for us. We can take countless steps to keep things interesting and challenging, but we can’t really seem to force inspiration when it shifts. At some point we may develop a sense that it’s time to move on even if our old practices are still some of our favorite things to do. Transition is rarely a clean process and can throw us into a funk for quite a while. We may continue to cling to the past that we know has changed for us and we can feel lost and uncertain without a clear vision for the future. There’s a lot of humility involved in moving away from areas where we have gained competence and starting over in new areas.
There are a few things we can do to sharpen our mindsets around transition:
In times of transition it’s important to focus attention on building our vision for the future. Even if it’s still very vague and keeps shifting, our vision will clarify if we take steps toward it with an open-minded and experimental attitude. A combination of following shifting inspirations and trying a few different things has generally helped me resolve times of stagnation and transitional funk and pulled me into new chapters of my athletic journey with my old levels of inspiration and drive restored.
We can shift our perspective on starting over with something new. Being a beginner is really fun and rewarding. Sometimes becoming very proficient at something becomes a ball and chain and we can let pride and pressure stand in the way of enjoying and learning. In closing an old chapter, it’s helpful to think about what we have learned and what we can take with us. If an activity or practice ceases to provide us with the same level of reward, it’s helpful to acknowledge this and work on balancing our minds about the shift. This reality always gives rise to as much opportunity as loss.
Transition helps us create a more fluid and expansive sense of identity. As helpful as it is to create identities for various mental health and social reasons, trying to pin ourselves down and define ourselves can also become our greatest limiter. The universe is made up of shifting and evolving energy and so are we. If something doesn’t feel right anymore, this may be a call to expand ourselves and let go of a way that we were limited in the past.
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