It's not possible to never feel anxiety. It is possible to feel anxiety less. It is not possible to never have an anxious thought. Wanting something to be eternally absent from our life for it to never happen, it won't happen. It's not possible. And at the same time, we do the opposite. We want something to be eternally present. We say, I always want to be happy. You can be happy every day, but you won't be happy every moment of
every day. That's also not possible. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you, I want to say that I am so deeply grateful for the strength of this incredible community, all the hard work that you're putting in, all the changes you're making in
your life. I am amazed that you're staying committed to listening to this podcast, and it means the world to me because it's so important to constantly refuel our minds, to inspire ourselves to connect with life changing thought because guess well, when we change our thoughts, we start to
change how we feel. And so I'm so grateful that you're here again, and today's episode is another solo episode where I'm going to give you some power tips on the five stages of managing change that you can't avoid and finding opportunity in adversity. I thought it was really important that we talk about how to manage change right
now because change is something we all experience. Change is something we're all going through right now, and we don't realize that we've never been exposed to the skills or the talents on how to deal with it now. Benjamin Franklin said it best, change is the only constant in life. One's ability to adapt to those changes will determine your success in life. That statement literally encapsulates everything we need
to know. Change is always going to be there, and sometimes it's more extreme like it is right now than at other times. But listen to what he says carefully. One's ability to adapt to those changes will determine your success in life. Adapting is everything for us, and it's crazy because learning to deal with change and adapting is probably the most useful skill in the world. Considering it
that it's so constant, changes are unavoidable. Everyone has to experience it, and it's consistently experienced but whenever trained in school or college or at work how to deal with it. No one ever teaches you how to deal with change. And that's what I want to share with you today because you'll find when I start going through these tips and these ideas, there's a lot in there that may
actually surprise you on how to deal with change. Often we're told like, just be positive, right, like just think good things, just look for the good in everything. And you know that's not necessarily the best advice, and often it can actually be misleading. It can create more challenges than it creates solutions, and we actually end up feeling emptier because of it. So none of what I'm gonna share with you today are just easy answers. This is really doing the deep work, which I know all of
you are ready for. Now. Here's the thing. Change can often feel like pain. It can feel like grief and loss. Change can feel like pain. Change can feel like a lot more than change because it often feels like things are changing for the worse. Right, we want things to change for the better. But when it feels like things are changing for the worse, that's when we feel pain. Now, tik Nat Harn explain this best He said that we
have this attachment to familiar pain. We keep going back to the same pain, and we want the same pain because it gives certainty in our life. How crazy is that that we crave certainty so much that we push ourselves towards familiar pain. We'd rather go through pain we're sure of than new pains, which he calls unfamiliar pains. It's crazy that we crave certainty so much that we would rather accept familiar pain than the unfamiliar pain of change.
So change feels like unfamiliar pain. It feels like you don't know what to expect, you don't know what's going to happen, and you're like, well, I don't want that. I just rather have the pain of sitting in this same place every day and feeling the pain that I'm used to feeling. And it's fascinating, right when you think about it like that, you're like, what is wrong with me? Like? Why would I do that to myself? But that's how badly we want certainty. That's how badly we want things
to stay the same. So I was looking at this when I was reflecting on this and thinking about this podcast, and I've been doing so many interviews recently on The Today's Show and CNN, and we've done a ton of interviews right now to try and support and help with CNBC with the WE movement. It's been a really powerful time to try and get this message out there. But when I was thinking about this podcast, I was looking at something called the Kubler Ross model, which talks about
the five stages of grief. So, here are the five stages of grief. And I'm reading from a graphic that I found on Pinterest, and it says that these are the five stages of grief and what they really mean. So the first stage of grief is, according to the Kubler Ross model, is denial. Denial is a normal reaction to rationalize overwhelming emotions. It is a defense mechanism that
buffers the immediate shock of loss. Now, the reason why I'm talking about the grief model is because I feel like, to some degree, we're all going through some sort of grief or loss at the moment. Right We've all lost some thing. We may have lost time, we may have lost money, we may have lost someone. And if you've lost someone or you're going through a really tough time, potentially about to lose someone, I just want to send you and them all my love and prayers and best wishes.
But others have lost different things. Maybe you lost or missed your graduation. Maybe you missed a prom Maybe you missed a promotion, maybe you missed a vacation. Maybe your weddings had to be postponed. Maybe you lost a job, maybe you broke up with someone because of the challenge at this time. So it's interesting that we're all going through some sort of grief and the five stages of grief. As the Kubula Ross model talks about denial as the first step. Often we deny the loss and we act like,
oh no, I haven't lost anything. I'm fine, Like I'm good right, don't worry about me, and we don't seek out help because we feel safer in the denial. Again, the familiar pain, as tik Na Han says, the second stage of the Kubul Ross model is anger, and it's described here as the numbing effect of the denial stage of grief begins to wear off, the pain of loss starts to firmly take hold as we search for blame,
feel intense guilt, and lash out. So this is where we you know, start trying to find someone else who's responsible for the pain. We reflect or deflect our pain onto someone else. Now, the third stage of the Kubul Ross model is bargaining. Bargaining is the what if stage of grief, and it serves an important purpose. It provides temporary escape from pain, provides hope, and gives a person time to adjust to the reality of the situation. Right,
that's that bargaining, what if this, what if that? And it gives us a temporary relief. Again, we're looking constantly for that numbing. It's fascinating that we've so not been trained to sit with our pain that we constantly trying to numb everything. Right, And when people are trying to numb stuff, we turn to alcohol, we turn to addiction, we turn to overeating, we turn to video games. We numb ourselves in so many different ways from feeling pain
because it feels easier. And so that's why we develop all these bad habits. And hey, if you've fallen into a bad habit right now, or you're struggling with a bad habit right now, you've got to give yourself a break. Because it's natural when we're feeling pain that we try and numb ourselves from that pain, so that's bargaining. The fourth is depression. In the Krubler Ross model, this type of depression is not a sign of mental illness. It
is the appropriate response to a great loss. You might experience intense sadness, decrease sleep, reduced appetite, and loss of motivation are common. And the fifth and final stage is acceptance. Acceptance refers to accepting the reality of a loss and the fact that nothing can change that reality. This does not mean that the person is okay with the loss.
I've studied and read about the Kubla Ross model before, and I was thinking a lot about it because I was thinking about the phases I was going through during this time. You know, we've all been in lockdown for like six to eight weeks now, and I was thinking that so many people are going through phases. And you can tell by the memes people post what phase they're
in right now. And you know, it started off as complete panic and kind of like confusion and anxiety, and then it got to a point of I'm board in the house, and I'm in the house board, and then it got to a point of trying to help and serve and make a difference. So it's really interesting. So the reason why I want to share this with you is I think we're all getting a real powerful opportunity right now to build our muscle of dealing with change.
Right dealing with change is like a muscle in the body. The more you lift a weight of that muscle, the more likely it strengthens. And so for so many of us, this is the first time that dealing with change is like hitting us in the face, and we can't avoid it. We can't skip it, we can't pretend like it's not there. We can't just say, oh, okay, like I can just go out with my friends and I won't have to
worry about this anymore. Right, How many of us have used busyness, used being productive, use being you know, just having a lot on as excuses for not really addressing what we're going through. And for the first time, it's hard to turn to any of those things. You Know, one of the biggest challenges that we're all experiencing right now is that we feel bad for what we feel
sad about. Right how many of you are going through that right now where you feel sad because you've lost something or there's something missing in your life, and then you feel bad because you're feeling sad for something that doesn't feel worthy of losing because someone else has lost so much more. And this is something that we all go through in life. So the example, let me just make it really simple, is that if someone's losing a family member and you've lost a vacation, you think you
can't feel bad for losing that vacation. Or if someone's lost their family member and you may have lost your job, but you're like, oh, at least I'm still alive. At least my family is still loves So you feel bad for feeling bad, right, you feel bad about feeling sad about whatever you've lost. Now, the truth is that this is actually one of the biggest mistakes we make and change is that we belittle our pain, We shrink it,
we make it feel insignificant. So sometimes that's a useful thing, but it's not useful when you just shove your feelings under the car, but you hide them. The analogy I was giving to someone the other day is you know, when someone's coming over to your home, You've got guests coming over, you've got friends coming over, and because you
don't want to tidy up properly. You shove all your clothes, all your snacks, whatever it is, you shove them into a wardrobe, hoping that no one's going to find it and see it, and they come over and go, oh, your place is so beautiful, blah blah blah blah. And then you know, in a few months time, you somehow open that shelf up again by mistake, and everything falls on top of you. Our problems are kind of like that.
We we try and close away our problems into the closet of hiding things from ourselves or brushing it under the carpet, and then one day all of our problems cascade and fall onto us when we reopened that closet. So you know, how many times are we going to keep doing this in our life? And I feel like right now, and it's not about the best time, it's a time when we don't really have a choice, where
we have to really address what's going on. So I want to talk about these five stages of change that I was inspired by the Kubula rosmodel and the five stages of grief, but I saw these as being the personal development, personal growth way of dealing with chains that I want to share with you today, and these are the five stages that I'm sure you're going and as you're listening to me, I want you to pinpoint where
you think you are. And remember none of them is a good place to be or a bad place, or a easy place or a hard place. I just want you to be honest with yourself about where you think you currently are. And none of them makes you better or worse. Right, like, I want you to recognize that like none of them makes you better or worse for where you are. It's just important if you know, you know, we all know this, that when you figure out where you are, then you know you know where you want
to go and where you want to be. So these are the five stages. And like I said, I don't want you to judge yourself or feel guilty. I want you to find yourself on the map. And the reason I'm sharing this with you today is I'm giving you the map of change because if you don't know where you are, how are you going to get to where
you want to get to? And that's really the issue that when you're stuck in a zone like a lot of us are right now, when you feel stuck, when you feel lost, when you feel confused, it gets really really tough, like really tough to know where you going next, and you kind of feel like there is no next. How many times have you ever felt that you like I've hit a wall, I'm at a dead end. It's blocked, it's not going anywhere. I don't know what I'm going to do. Right, So this is why I'm giving you this.
So the first stage, and this is imagine the first time you heard about COVID and you realize that there might be a lockdown and you might not be able to see anyone. The first thing that we experience is anxiety. Right, how many of you hold your hand up right now, not a way. How many of you felt anxiety, confusion, fear, and feeling stuck. I'm sure a lot of you felt that. I know I felt that. You just feel mass confusion, like pandemic. I remember a lot of people saying the
word pandemic. It's like, Wow, this sounds crazy. I can't believe there's a pandemic. And then you go, wow, it's affecting the whole world for the first time, and you're just getting anxious. You're getting tons of alerts, you're getting tons of news, you're getting tons of chats and conversations and all the rest of it, and all of a sudden, completely anxious. So anxiety is a very common thing to
feel at the beginning of change. Now one of the biggest things that we do with anxieties, we almost feel surprised by it. We're like, oh, no, why am I feeling so anxious? Why am I feeling so nervous? Why am I confused? It's like, well, wait, wait a minute. If someone just told you news that you weren't expecting, it's natural to feel anxious. I want you to realize this.
We get surprised by anxiety and we start getting worried that we're anxious, But actually, what's happened is that anxiety is something that we should expect because anytime something new happens, you're naturally going to feel anxious, and anxiety is a natural and normal feeling. It's when we demonize it we get scared of it. And this was one of the most beautiful teachings I learned as a monk that monks
never demonize or glorify anything. We neutralize it. So when you hear about anxiety, If you demonize anxiety, it's like, oh know, anxiety is the worst thing that could happen to me. It's gonna happen to you again at some point when it happens to you, like, oh my god, this is the worst thing that's happening to me. Right, you associate that demonized version of it. Now, obviously we know glorify anxiety, but a glorified version is like, oh my god, anxiety is the best thing in the world.
It's amazing. That's also not true, right. We don't want anxiety all the time. We don't want to feel constantly anxious. So neutralizing it means I expect it to happen, and I'm learning to develop the tools and the practices that help me manage it and navigate it, rather than expect it never to happen. We want a lot in our life to be eternally present or eternally absent. So what I mean by that is often we say like, I never want to feel anxious again. News update. Not possible,
just not possible. It's not possible to never feel anxiety. It is possible to feel anxiety less. It is possible to feel anxiety for less time. It is not possible to never have an anxious thought, right, So something to be eternally absent from our life for it to never happen. It won't happen. It's not possible. And at the same time we do the opposite, We want something to be eternally present. We say, I always want to be happy.
I want to be happy every single day. You can be happy every day, but you won't be happy every moment of every day. That's also not possible. And so these false expectations in our minds and our lives create anxiety. And so I really want you to think about what's creating your anxiety and how the more we learn to accept it and normalize it and neutralize it, the easier it begins to deal with. Now, the second thing that we all experience, which I think most of us experienced
in different ways, is anger. Now, anger doesn't mean you're shouting and screaming and being loud. It can mean that, but anger also means like an internal feeling of like bitterness and just feeling upset and angry at the world and anger at yourself and angry at what's going on and not being productive. So anger can also be inward. It doesn't always have to be outward and I think a lot of us experience inward anger more than we
experience outward anger. And again, this is the frustration, the pain, the disappointment with ourselves are the situation where angry at governments, we're angry at the world, we're angry at the news, We're just angry. And again, this is something that we have to experience. It's something we have to feel. It's not abnormal. What we have to try and do with our emotions is to feel them for less time and give them less energy. But it doesn't mean we don't
have to feel them. And so maybe many of you went through anger again, figure out where you are on the journey. Now. The third statement or the third place is acceptance. Right, so you can see some of these are they're in the Kubler Ross model, although I mean different things for me, it's also accepting in the same way. Is that you accept what's going on. You're like, Okay, I get it. The quarantine's a real thing, lockdown's a real thing. It's a real thing. This is all real.
It's not going away. But that doesn't mean I'm happy about it. It just means that I accept that it's there, it's real, and I have to deal with the fact that it's now happening, right, it's getting to grips now. Getting to acceptance as quick as you can is a beautiful thing when it's real. Like you want to get to acceptance very beautifully and naturally and get to a point where you just are able to say, yes, I've found it, Yes I'm here, Yes I'm there, but it
needs to be real. And sometimes we've rushed the process of getting to acceptance because we think we have to be there. And I don't want you to be at acceptance because you feel you have to be there. I want you to be at acceptance because you really are there. Right when you feel you have to be somewhere, you're not really there, you know what I mean. Like even when someone says you have to be at a party, you're not really there. That's kind of like getting to acceptance.
It's like, I want you to be there because you want to be there. I don't want you to be there because you think you have to be there. Really think about that with acceptance and acceptance again, is not a permanent state. So you may get to acceptance in a day and then you may feel in anxiety again the next day. That's fine, but acceptance is a growing state. Again, It's not permanent anything. When we're looking for permanent there's nothing that has that permanent fixture for us when it
comes to our emotions, and that shouldn't worry us. It should save us from the false expectation. The fourth stage is adjusting and adapting. Now, this is where you should be spending most of your time and where you want
to be. Where you're experimenting with morning routines, you're experimenting with, trying out new workouts, you're experimenting with trying to find your feet, and adjusting and adapting is something we find unnerving, but actually we can find very exciting because you're constantly trying to find out how to make this work and how it fits and so so I feel like anxiety
was with me for about three days. For me, when I first heard about all of this, I was anxious about, you know, how it would affect things, and trying to figure it out. Anger. I've worked on feeling less and less in life, but definitely can go inwards to be aware of it. Acceptance. I've trained myself through this process to get there quicker. Adjusting and adapting to the longest period for me. So I feel like I was adjusting
and adapting for a good three weeks. For three weeks, I didn't know what kind of routine I wanted, how I wanted to focus, And I found that having a morning routine, having that certainty in your day is what
creates adjusting and adapting easy. So when you're doing the adjusting and adapting mode, what you want to do to get there is you want to create a stake in the ground, one landmark thing that you do every day, one landmark thing you do in the morning and in the evening, one flagship thing, and that really allows that to become easier. So in the anxiety phase, what you want to do is you want to seek facts. When
we're anxious, you want to reset and seek facts. You want to focus away from fiction, focus away from opinion. You want to focus on facts. And that's what we don't do in anxiety and anxiety. It's very natural to go with opinions, it's very natural to get lost in ideas, but actually an anxiety, what you want is facts. That's how you solve anxiety and change. You move towards facts. Now, when you're feeling anger, what do you do in anger?
In anger, you journal, You allow yourself to feel that pain, but you try and direct it towards what's actually stopping you, which will come back to yourself. So you want to not direct anger to youwards yourself, but you want to direct that reflection. So anger requires reflection and introspection in acceptance to get there. What you want to do is you want to start creating a real viewpoint now of where you thinks are heading and adjusting and adapting. You
want to spend experimenting and exploring. And the fifth and final step I call is action. This is when you finally get it to a groove and you create a plan and you start moving and making a difference in your life and the lives of others. So the five stages of managing any change or anxiety, anger, acceptance, adjusting and adapting and action, and guess what, it's a cycle. You are going to go through all of them multiple times.
Do not expect to get to action and then not fall back into anxiety later that week, And that shouldn't discourage you. It should make you feel like you have a real plan. If you know that it's going to happen. It's like you have to work out every day. You know that you don't get to a particular type of body or mind and then it just stays the same.
Right it doesn't work like that. And what I've been blown away by right now is the best of humanity, Like you know, the people that have not stopped living because of the virus. And that's really the key to managing change is that you find a new way to live, and you find a new way to fall in love with your life. And when I've seen people, I've seen people like getting married on zoom. I've seen a person who was disinfecting all of their FedEx packages when they
delivered them. I've seen someone who was in a church just with their partner and they put pictures of all of their family members around them and got married. I mean, I've seen incredible things and it fills me with so much joy and hope that people find ways to manage change. And therefore, one of the best ways to manage change is affection. Giving affection to others lets you feel like you have a role, when you feel you're part of the solution. It makes you feel like the problem is
getting smaller and smaller. When you're not a part of the solution, the problem feels like it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So I really hope that you applied this to right now. I hope you applied to any change in your life. Share this with your friends, Put this on your Instagram stories, on Twitter, on Facebook, on YouTube. Tell me what's resonating with you, Tell me what's connected with you. I can't wait to see what you see. It's always always fascinating for me to come across what
stands out to you and what makes a difference to you. Now, I want to read some of your incredible reviews that you've left on the podcast. And this was for the kernow Naya podcast from Jen in Boston. I believe I've listened to many episodes, However, I think this is by far my favorite episode. I fell in love with Canw's wisdom and insight. Okay, this is great. I'm reading another one from Jesse zero three, zero five. Hands down the most genuine person and content I've come across, and I
listened to all the greats. He has such a profound experience and he has a way of broaching challenging topics with no judgment and sound advice, tangible knowledge, and beautiful soul. You will not regret listening to a single episode. Thank you so much for those beautiful reviews. It means so much to me. If you go to the podcast app and leave a review and share them on your stories, tag me in and I will try and repost some of them as well. Thank you so much for listening today,
share this episode. Appreciate you so much. Take care and see you next week. Six