Empower Up: 3 Little Known Secrets to Making Friends With Change

Empowerment and being able to navigate the fear of change go hand and hand. Please hear this without judgment; if you keep doing what you do, you will keep getting what you are getting - no exceptions. It is all to common for people to want a thriving business, happy, fulfilling relationships and good health without adjusting their attitudes and behaviors.

There's truth to the saying "your attitude determines your altitude". So, why is change so challenging? There can be several reasons, yet at the root of it is social conditioning. This conditioning is not really intentional; it is actually habitual and passed down through generational thinking. We often think that the way we see life is just "the way it is".

Actually, reality is "mind-made"; it is a way of seeing or perception. Perception rules as it wires your brain to see what you have decided to believe as true - whether it is or not.

Once you believe something, your brain will seek to prove you right. It becomes a "self-fulfilling" prophecy as your nervous system will screen in the things it has been wired to look for and screen out the things you decided don't work or may be harmful to you.

Of course these things could certainly just be relative and based on assumptions that are not even factual. It does not matter; this is why what you mind matters. What you keep your attention on can ultimately manifest in your life, so it can manifest, or turn into matter (a science term for physical form).

The trick is to stop focusing on what you fear or don't want. If you associate change with "don't want" or "bad", then your emotional reaction will gear up for battle in the classic "fight, flight or freeze" response.

This does not have to be. I know, as I used to respond to change with much fear. It often took summing up all of my courage to push through to where I wanted to go. While you may require courage for some advances in your life, life does not have to be lived as one big struggle. I have come to embrace change, as it is one thing in life that is guaranteed.

When we resist the inevitable, we self-inflict suffering. While it is fine to have likes and dislikes, the key is to see them as merely preference and not become so attached to the outcome. Expect the best and let go. Of course, this in and of itself will require you to recondition the belief that somehow disappointment is "fatal". I could write another whole separate post on our fear of "disappointment".

Here are three uncommon factors that are associated with fear of change and what you can do to begin to rethink them and retrain your brain for a more empowering outcome:

1. Feelings - Let me ask you this; when you stop having any feelings at all, where will you be? (Clue: "6 feet _____"). Feeling is actually a type of emotional guidance system to let you know if what you are thinking is based in love or fear. You can consciously manage them and even change our outcomes in life by paying attention. Repressing undesired feelings instead of learning how to release them is actually hazardous to your health - really.

The first step? Learn from science what feelings are and how they become formed in the first place so that you can diffuse all the mystery about them right out the gate.

2. Clarity - Most people can tell you what they DON'T want but have little idea about what they DO want. Your nervous system functions as a missile-seeking machine and it does not judge "good or bad". It's goal is to take you wherever you focus your attention. Now get this: the stronger the emotional charge, the faster you are likely to manifest the outcome or results. Hence, once again, you are better off learning how to read and direct your feelings consciously instead of trying to keep them stuffed in the unconscious closet of your body.

One way to clarify what you want is to take the opposite of what you have feared. So, if you "fear poverty", get clear about desiring abundance. How does abundance feel? (Abundance is a quality of love, by the way)

3. Stress - Realize that stress is "mind-made"; it is not "out there". It is an inside job. Stress is all about perception. It is a story about a given set of "facts" and it is unique to you in general. So, many people are focusing on the fear of losing their jobs, etc and so they feel this fear in their bodies and it shows up as "stress". Stress comes from feeling disempowered or expecting the worse. It is a form of faith for what you don't want. Can you see how this ties into points one and two above? What can you do?

There are several approaches but the most long-term, lifestyle changing one to do is to learn mindfulness meditation. This form of meditation has been called "hygiene for the brain" for a good reason. It has really elevated the quality of my own life.

So, empowerment comes in a lasting way by thinking outside of the box and pulling away from the old paradigms about "survival of the fittest". You can be successful and happy in life without seeing the universe as fearful and constrictive.

In fact, the more loving and collaborative you become, you will find that life starts to open up and you can become even more successful than you ever thought possible. This all begins within. Making change your friend begins when you set intention to breakthrough to the real you and live from an empowered sense of Authentic Self.