From a burst geyser to a broken toe, from car troubles to a cone of shame, change is seldom linear. You don’t get to deal with one thing and then the next, in an orderly fashion. Here are some tips for dealing with the change-storm life sometimes sends your way.
Life has a way of throwing things your way in groups. Common wisdom would have it as groups of three, but sometimes there’s a whole lot more.
You’ll be choogling along for three, maybe four months, with everything going just fine, and then suddenly, on one day, the geyser bursts, your car breaks down, you break your toe, and you hear that your mother-in-law has decided to come and stay. For a month.
It’s enough to make you want to run away. Except you live in a town with terrible public transport, and there’s the car problem.
Which is how I felt last year when I moved house, having recently changed jobs and gone through a divorce. On that list of top stressors, I was dealing with three – the magical number. I thought that was enough to cope with, but life had other ideas.
In the first week or two after we moved, the electrical box got flooded (day one), locks broke, we were burgled twice, the front gate broke, the pool pump wasn’t working. One of my dogs was walking around in the cone of shame after some surgery, bumping into legs and boxes wherever he went, and he managed to rip his stitches out…you get the idea.
But a year later, my children and I have survived, and all is well. The dog is back in the cone of shame for another issue, but it’s all under control – or as under control as one ever feels.
So how did I get through all of that? Here are some of my coping strategies for when it feels as if every change moment in the world has been thrown at you, and you cannot possibly make it through.
1. Fall apart when you need to. Somehow we think we have to walk around coping all the time. That’s not how being a human being works. Life is wonderful sometimes and it’s awful at other times. Being happy when it’s good is appropriate and being miserable when it’s not is also appropriate. Have a good cry, hit a punching bag, vent to a friend, but fall apart. It’s okay.
2. Ask for help. This was my biggest lesson. Even if it’s just asking someone to recommend a plumber or an electrician, or asking someone to pick your kids up from school – ask, and believe me, you will receive. And you’ll return the favour at some point in the future, because these things have a way of working themselves out without us having to keep score.
3. I saved a good chunk of money for the ‘unforeseens’ when I moved, but I ended up needing three to four times what I’d put aside and I couldn’t afford them all at once. So I had to choose what to sort out and in what order. So you have to kind of triage the disasters – a pool pump is less important than improving your security after a burglary, for example. Start with the things that will ensure your safety, security, basic needs and peace of mind.
4. Get enough sleep. It’s tempting to skimp on sleep when you have a to-do list that could carpet the Great Wall of China, but the less you sleep, the less productive you are. Getting enough sleep means that you think more clearly, work more efficiently, and be more resilient.
5. Accept that there will always be change and challenge. This is vital. I’ve realised I will never do everything on my to-do list. That I’ll never feel like everything in my house is fixed and perfectly maintained and good to go. There will always be something else. But if you rail against the change constantly, you just expend energy you could be using to sort things out. Once you’ve accepted the situation, you can take a breath, get up and figure out what you’re going to do about it.
Finally, as trite as that saying might seem about having made it through 100 percent of your bad days so far, it’s true. You have gone through other changes and you’re still standing. You’ll get through these too. And you’ll look back – as I am now – and realise that you’re a lot stronger than you think you are.
You’ve got this.
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