When speaking with Ariane de Bonvoisin, author of The First 30 Days: Your Guide to Any Change (and Loving Your Life More) she shared five crucial steps to productive change.
Change is an internal process, she said. Even though change might have happened on the outside, ultimately it is on the inside that it is happening. One of the number one ways to start feeling better about yourself, about a tough change or a change that you want to initiate, is to take care of your health. That is a number one non-negotiable, because when you are going through change, your health is the first thing that goes out the window. You sleep less, you eat more, you drink more coffee or alcohol, and you’re not moving. It is really hard to feel massive anxiety or fear when you are actually moving, like walking or running. You’ve got to physcially move to start moving the emotions of change through you. So for 30 days, you must commit to take care of your health.
The second thing to do is to start allowing yourself to have a little bit of quiet time. Change is very busy, very hectic and dramatic. But whether it’s ten or fifteen minutes a day of just being with yourself, wherever it is, allow it, because that is when the intuition starts taking over. That’s when you get the guidance. That’s when you go, ‘Oh, I see this. Or oh, I should call this person.’ Just sit with what is because that is where your answers are. Your intuition is on your side. It’s actually trying to get you back on track.
The third step to take to make change easier is to become less-selfish. Change is very me, me, me. My job, my weight, my relationship, my home, my deal, and that energy does not feel good. The human being and spirit wants ‘we’. It wants connection, it wants unity, it wants giving, it wants sharing, it wants love. So if you are in a bad place of change, find any way you can to reverse the energy and have it go outward. Find a way to give, to share, and to be there for someone else. It’s one of the number one ways to change the energy that is swirling inside of you.
When we’re going through change, everything seems very black and white. This is a good change and that is a bad change. We’re very quick at labeling. The divorce is a bad change. Getting a bad health diagnosis is the worst thing ever. So the fourth element to successful change is no labeling. You don’t know if not getting this job is good or bad. You don’t know if breaking up is good or bad. Your beloved might be three months out. We really don’t know. As hard and as tough as the change might look, the mind will disapprove and jump to conclusions, and then suddenly you will change your mind to a more positive stance.
The fifth idea, which actually is the focus of Ariane’s new book, called A Foot in Both Worlds, is that we’re not in an either/or world anymore. It’s not either I’m going to be in the corporate world or I’m going to go pursue my dreams. Either I’m going to be ambitious or I’m going to be spiritual. We’re more in an ‘and’ world than in an either/or world. It’s a belief change. Change is an invitation not to get the same job again, but very often to look at two or three things. People that are going to change are open- minded. Ariane says to people, ‘if you’re hesitating between two things, pick the third’. There is always a third option, and the mind has to come up with it. Change is about having us realize how powerful we are, not to buy into all the conformity and the beliefs that people think are the ultimate truth. It’s not about asking for permission or approval or getting someone to agree with your change. It’s actually about taking your power back.
All change ultimately gets us back to who we really are, what we really want to be doing with our lives, what we really love, where we want to live that we love. It’s a beautiful wakeup call and opportunity to get us back on track to be given permission to do what we really came here to do and what we want to be doing.
Change is the most important life skill to get good at because we are all going to go through dozens of them. It’s the most important business skill to get good at. If you want to keep your job, you really need to get good at change. They are hiring the people that are going to change and they are keeping the people that are going to change.
Check out more of Ariane’s sage advice in The First 30 Days: Your Guide to Any Change (and Loving Your Life More. Find her book locally at East West Bookshop in Seattle, and click on the linked articles The First 30 Days of Change, and Intuition and the Language of Life for more of what she had to share.
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