Good morning and Happy Sunday! š
Without any delay at all, I want you to go and get your chai, coffee, water, anything that might give you some comfort because this one might be a small reality check for many.
Weāre talking about change today, (not the change you get back after paying for something), and more on why we resist it.
Weāve all heard people say āChange is naturalā, weāve also seen posters of āBe the change you want to see in the worldā, a famous quote by Mahatma Gandhiji which was plastered all over my school and UG college.
Why, then, are we so natural to resist change as well?
Weāve talked about our flight and fight response before right? (10 points for anyone who can remember it) Let me give you a quick recap of it.
When your brain, particularly your amygdala (a bunch of almond-looking cells, deep in the brain), perceives any threatening situation, it releases some stress hormones and activates your bodyās fight or flight response for survival. As the name suggests, you either fight through the situation or take a flight from it, whatever seems more helpful at the moment.
The key here is, the almonds in your brain also perceive āchangeā as a threatening situation. Since change is new, uncertain and the loss of something usual, your brain, in an attempt to mobilize all your energy, accidentally scares you. This makes you want to take a flight from the situation and avoid it. But, as we know, we cannot really avoid life-changing situations, so we fight through it with a mindset that hates the change.
āWho Moved My Cheeseā, a famous 1998 self-help book by Spencer Johnson nails this concept of change, how different people react to it differently, and thus, how they all end up in different situations.
To summarise, the book uses two mice in a maze who have a go-getter attitude. They actively look for their ācheeseā (synonymous with happiness, success) when someone moves it, they know that this cheese is not going to last forever, and most importantly, they donāt keep waiting for their lost cheese to reappear.
Two more characters, tiny little humans, also in the maze, are looking for their cheese. When they find it, they settle there, get comfortable, and think that this is all theyāve wanted their whole life. When they run out of cheese or when someone moves it, they get sad and try to look for their cheese in other places, but always end up returning to the place where they lost it.
One day, one of the tiny humans in the maze gets up and decides that he has been sitting around long enough, It is now time to look for more cheese. The other human does not share this same vision and is dead-set on staying sad and not taking action, forcing his tiny friend to leave him behind. Eventually, the little human who set out to look for cheese finds the two other characters of the book, the mice, and the three of them look for cheese and share it with each other.
I will end on what the book also ended on.
There is always more cheese waiting to be found.
When you stop ruminating about your lost cheese and explore your maze looking for your next piece of cheese, you are bound to find some, if not a lot of it.
We are all aware that change is bound to happen but we find it difficult to accept..nobody likes to move from their comfort zone. But I have learnt to say tha same thing in unhappy and difficult situations. I keep telling myself that hold on ..this is gonna change soon. That gives me more strength to fight through tough situations and keeps me going. Loved your article Shefali..its always motivating and give me an unknown energy. šš„°