Maybe you can't change the thing, but you can change how you relate to it
A friend of mine is facing some financial challenges at the moment. Their finances have been good for years but some of their funds are running low and if they don’t get a cash injection soon, they’re worried that they’ll have to make some major sacrifices in their life. To them, this is a looming disaster. They’re stressed about it, they’re making it mean that they’re failing, and they’re not currently relating to anything else in their life as important or joyful until this “problem” is fixed.
The reality is that the financial challenge is unlikely to just go away over night. It’s often the case that issues in our lives - financial woes, health challenges, relationship breakdowns, a challenging boss - don’t just go away. We can easily feel stuck or trapped in the issue, and unable to see that joy or happiness can still be present while the issue remains.
But while the issue itself might remain, and the circumstances stay just as they are, we do still have a choice: we can choose to shift how we relate to the issues that we face.
We all relate to different things in our lives in very specific ways, often ways that are predictable to us given how we’ve related to similar things in the past. The way we relate to things are just learned behaviours - socialised in us, and therefore totally changeable.
Let’s look at my friend’s financial issue again. They grew up in a family of little means. Money was always tight. Their family always related to money as:
A thing of scarcity
A constant burden and source of worry
Hard work to gain any
Difficult to keep hold of
A problem
Loss and losing.
And that’s informed the stress and the worry that my friend is now feeling in the face of money drying up in future months. But in reality they are choosing to relate to money that way. There’s nothing that says it has to be this way. Even if the money situation is still present precisely as it currently is, they could instead choose to relate to this as:
An opportunity to get creative with earning and budgeting
A place to practice asking others for support and help
A learning opportunity for their children to develop their own relationship to money
The kick they need to start raising their fees and charging people what they are actually worth
An opportunity to therefore have a major breakthrough in self-worth
A source of abundance
A chance to create a major win.
How much less stressed do you think my friend would feel if they related to their financial challenge that way, instead of the way they currently relate to it.
The same is true of any challenge we face. You only have to look at how those diagnosed with a chronic or terminal illness are able to shift how they relate to illness, life and death through their journey. We see it all the time. Many choose to relate to their health issues as an opportunity instead of relating to it as disempowering.
Take a look for yourself
Think of something that’s challenging you right now
Take a hard look at how you’re relating to that thing
Write a list of how you’re currently relating to it
Then write a list of how you would like to relate to it instead
Take steps to start relating to it in that way instead
See the amazing things that follow when you do make that shift.
Some example shifts
To help you think about this, I’ve just listed below a few common ways that people relate to challenges. I’ve then offered some alternative ways that you could relate to the challenge instead:
“Challenging” … could instead be “opportunity for growth”
“Hard work”… could instead be “a place to practice asking for support and help”
“The end of the world”… could instead be “a pivotal moment for a breakthrough”
“Problem”… could instead be “start of a breakthrough”
“Temporary fix”… could instead be “lasting once-and-for-all transformations”
“Lonely”… could instead be “a chance to connect meaningfully with others”
“Don’t know the answer”… could instead be a “learning opportunity”
“Scarcity”… could instead be “abundant”
“Scary”… could instead be “exciting”
“Uncomfortable”… could instead be “opportunity that exists in the unknown”.
You see, you get to choose. And in the choosing, you determine not only how stressed you’re going to be as you work and live through the thing, but you also start to effect the outcome through seeing it in a very different way. So, what are you going to shift?