Day 30: Choose Your Circumstance

Welcome to Step One of How to Embrace Change, the first step of your journey to adjusting so well to the change of life, your friends will wonder what your secret is.

In this step, you’ll discover a simple mindset shift that will help you reframe your perspective of the changes you’re experiencing. You’ll also learn an easy way to transform any fear or anxiety you may be feeling, so you are better equipped to manage the things you can control and accept the things you can’t.

Step one is Choose Your Circumstances, so let’s start by exploring what we commonly tell ourselves about this stage of life.

Going through menopause can feel isolating, exhausting and challenging. This isn’t surprising given it feels like your mind and body are ganging up on you, as they throw all kinds of unexpected and unwanted surprises your way.

If you’re like many women, you may not only be giving yourself a hard time about how you’re coping, but also using a lot of energy trying to fight with your situation.

Choice derives from a French verb which means to choose, distinguish, discern, recognize, perceive or see.

How would it feel to know that you can shift your experience by shifting and choosing a different perspective?

The truth is, this time of change doesn’t need to look or feel a certain way. And you’re definitely not failing if you struggle with it. There’s no precedent to set, no shortcut, no diversion around the hard stuff. No-one finds change easy in the beginning. Pushing, resisting or punishing yourself, won’t make this time any easier.

As modern women, we’ve learned to multitask and manage challenging situations. But as you’ve probably realised, you can’t shove your way through this stage of your life, so it isn’t your fault if you haven’t yet learned a more gentle approach.

Instead, I invite you to accept the struggle, let go of any desire to do it ‘right’ and choose to view your journey differently.

The question is how?

The answer is to realise that change doesn’t have a quality. Except the one we give it when we think about it, anticipate it, or find it being forced upon us.

We all experience times in our lives when we have changes we didn’t see coming that we don’t want, that feel horrible. That’s part of life and part of our human journey. You can either resist it with every fibre of your being, exhausting yourself in the process, or you can choose a new circumstance.

When you can mentally reframe this time of transition in your life, it goes from being confusing and unsettling, to being about chances, opportunities and momentum. To put it simply, you can choose to shift your focus from the inconvenient aspects of this change. And then focus on the opportunity-creating ones instead.

You can start seeing the potential good in this change.

Your mind has a great deal of control over your experience, so what if you saw this time as an opportunity rather than a threat to everything you know?

Take out the G from the word change and replace it with a C, so it becomes chance instead. Changing your perspective in this simple way, helps you choose to view this time as an opportunity. You now get to take a chance on future you and lean in for the journey.

During this natural time of life, you get to discover new facets of yourself you didn’t know were there. So rather than feeling like you’re failing, choose to believe in your capacity to navigate this period of your life. Embrace progress rather than perfection.

Right now, you can choose what you tell yourself about this time. You can choose to have faith in yourself, have patience and trust and accept that you’re doing the best you can.

The power lies within you, not outside you.