Have you ever wondered why managing change creates pain in your mind, body, and soul? As our brains negotiate with change we are experiencing in real time, our DNA forces us to revert into default mode when we experience the unpredictability and uncontrollability of change.
It’s the proverbial fork in the road, do I go left or do I go right which will determine how I manage change in this particular situation.
Take for example this workplace scenario:
The Vice President comes to you and asks you to help with a critical organizational issue and it requires you to provide leadership to a technical team, which is outside your knowledge base and comfort zone.
This cognitive dissonance creates stress and discomfort for you. How will the stress and pain of change produce benefits of wellness?
1. Being taken out of your comfort zone is your first wellness benefit. Even as it causes pain, it allows you to build new skills to navigate an unknown course of action quickly to reduce stress.
2. The second wellness benefit is confidence. As you navigate the change successfully, your level of confidence increases exponentially for future unpredictable change situations.
3. The third wellness benefit is the acquisition of new knowledge about your changing environment that is transferred and absorbed immediately into your ecosystem of thinking.
4. The fourth benefit of managing change is that it helps you create a mental structure for you to reconcile and navigate future change; therefore your mental agility will increase with each and every new encounter.
4. The fifth wellness benefit comes from an increase in your mental agility, because as your mental agility sharpens through managing change, it helps minimize the stress and impact that comes from the unpredictability of change.
Key points:
1. Don’t be afraid to move out of your comfort zone; mental wellness comes from minimizing stressful situations.
2. Build confidence by managing change effectively.
3. Acquire a new base of knowledge to improve your understanding of navigating change.
4. Create your mental model to reduce stress on your brain to enhance mental wellness.
5. Use new knowledge to your advantage. The more you know, the more comfortable you are to address uncontrollable and unpredictable change at work and home.
Managing change requires different skills, knowledge, and experience for each situation because our mental wellness depends on it. As your mental agility sharpens daily, leverage those learnings at every opportunity you get to create a successful outcome for yourself.
Science has proven through inquiry, observation, and practice that mental wellness can be achieved by managing change successfully. The actual benefits of mental wellness are immeasurable and continue to evolve with our rapidly changing world.
Originally published at medium.com