There are times in our life, when we reach the point of Unavoidable Change. When anything that we do seem to lead us to make a decision, which pushes us out of our comfort zone – and to say that we “make” this decision ourselves is an overstatement, because we usually have very little or no choice.
Sometimes this happens after a major breakdown, end of relationship, sickness, loss of  job, or it is a build-up of small events that accumulate to an overall need for a change.
When we reach this point, we know inside that this needs to happen. We feel motivated, happy and positively minded about our decision, but at the same time we are scared and stressed because we go out of our long term comfort zone.
How to deal with those mixed feelings? Positive ones are desirable, but negative are the ones that require attention. If we allow them to grow, in no time they can paralyze us – freeze us between leaving the current place and reaching the new one. If we stay in this state of mind for longer, we could even get depression.

Some time ago I was very stressed at work. Overloaded with tasks and projects. At some point I could not even sleep a whole nights – I woke up @ 2am and could not fall asleep anymore. It continued like that for a few weeks until I decided to share my problem with a friend. She helped me understand the root cause of my stress and used her organisational skills to help me sort all my tasks and projects with specific time scales assigned to each individual one. I felt like I could breathe again.

She shared with me her way to manage Stress:

I am not someone who can preach that Big Changes should be done often, simply because I myself do not change much in my life. I often settle in reasonable comfort zone and live my life in moderate happiness, quietly hoping that the change will come on its own. I know the theory behind going out into the wild and turning things around to keep developing and learning, but reality is that this is not me. I make a Change only if I have to, only when I feel that there is no other way around it. I feel that this time has came again.

The big question is how to direct those changes, so another one will not come again in few months or years? First of all, it is important to understand what is the reason? Are we missing something, avoiding something, planning for a long term future (expanding family, starting a new carrier, starting new business)? Knowing that, we can narrow our search a bit. In my case it is new job and eventually new place of living (new city). There are things that I would like to eliminate from life and things that I see desirable from a new carer and area I will live in. It is very important to have those two lists with us every time we make another step towards our new goal, to make sure we are always on the right track, as some decisions might be costly to correct, or even could be irreversible. Someone once said: If you don’t plan, you plan for a failure. There is also a positive side effect to all this preparation – the feeling of every small success that we achieve gets us more motivated and excited and fear of unknown slowly diminish as we get controllably closer and closer to where we want to be.

I know that I could stay where I am and I would be OK, but at the same time this feeling of passing years and imagining myself in the same situation 10 years from now makes me horrified. OK is not good enough for me long term, I can do better, and I will. Hope you will do as well!