3. The Challenge of Change

being the best as possible. Make sure to subscribe today, follow along and start your own positivity quest. Welcome to Episode Three of positivity on fire. I'm your host Jason Ramsden, and today's episode, the 180 degree pivot. In this episode, we'll talk about what happens when life changes a little bit about my upcoming story of change, and a few tips and tricks for overcoming change in your life. So let's get today's show kicked off, shall we ever have that? Oh, crap, my

life is changing moment. You know, the one that sucks the wind out of your sails makes you pause and wonder what's coming up next. We've all been there. It's a normal part of life, right? As I've mentioned in previous episodes, I'm a military brat. Change is part of my life, it has been for a long time. But it still doesn't change the fact that change is hard. And change is hard every garlis of whether or not you know it's coming, or you didn't

see it coming. In my case, it was changed that I could see coming. Actually, it was so clear that it was something that I could like grasp my head around, I welcomed and that I'm actually really looking forward to. Now the story of my change actually started about 18 years ago. And I know you're saying Jay, I don't have time for a long winded story, don't worry. I'll give you the synopsis the cliff notes if you will. But 18 years ago, my wife and I, we had two little kids aged three and

five. And we were living in New York and traveling a great distance to go to work both of us. And while we both worked in education, different spots, and we decided to make a move down to Raleigh, North Carolina, we figured it would be a better place to raise the kids. And we ended up after a couple of years of being in Raleigh working at the same school, we both educators, we both work in the same school for the last 15 years. During our time there. My wife made her way up her side of

the organization. I made my way, my side of the organization, I got to a point where I was even president of the National Association for my my profession, as board chair. And my wife got all the way to second in command for academics and student life at the school that we work in, you pivot to about four years ago, and my wife decides to start a doctoral program. And she blazes through it. No time for years done. She defends her dissertation this last Thanksgiving. And she has

now Dr. Ramsden. During the course of that doctor, we talked about what comes next, what are the next steps in our lives. She really wanted to pursue being a head of school. And over the last three years, she kind of went through those phases, did some searches. And then finally this past September, she landed a new headship. So even though 18 years ago, this journey began, we could kind of see the path that we were headed down, and that at some point, in our empty nest life, kids are grown

now. one's getting ready to graduate college, the other one just has a year or two left to go, we could see on the horizon like this empty nest life. But that doesn't mean that the change that's upcoming for us later this summer, isn't gonna be different, right? It's not gonna, it's it isn't something that's gonna be easy, because it's something new. Both worked in education together for

a long, long time. And now my wife will be at a school and I had to think about what comes next and I want to stay in education, or do I want to pivot while you listen to this podcast? So you can imagine I've pivoted a little bit. You also hear me introduce myself as a personal executive coach. And that's another thing that's coming down the pike for me, it doesn't mean that we don't have to overcome some change. And there's always a challenge in

change. For me in particular, I'm not a fan, okay, I've spent 30 years in education. Now I've got a pivot. It's exciting. And at the same time, there's some trepidation there. And I get it like many folks, I'm in a real enviable position to make a change, because I don't have to worry about the financial side. Immediately about the change that I'm I'm taking on. But that doesn't mean that it's not

scary. Here I am sitting behind a mic Watching a podcast, trying to get people interested in the positive mindset and the power of positivity in your life, and trying to get people to see what it means to make significant changes in your life, how to tackle change in your life. And all of a sudden, I'm going down a path that I have never been down before. So how am I going to go about tackling this

change? As I said before, there is challenge and change, and there's actually change in challenge, you can't have one without the other. And we'll talk about that in just a second. Coming up, we discussed the challenge of change, and what the LL E. and challenge really means. I know some of you probably said, Yeah, Jay, I get it changes hard. There's challenge and change. We understand that we've all been through it. But have you really thought about what it means when we talk about

the challenge and change. For me, it means being resilient, fast example of resilience, if you have a stress ball, or like a little squishy ball, and when you squeeze it, okay, that's the change that represents the change in your life. And if you let go of that ball, you see that it slowly comes back to the form that it was before. Okay,

that's resilience. So if you have a stress ball in your house, right now, if you want to go grab it, while you're listening to this podcast and experiment with it, you'll just see, imagine the ball being resilience, you're squeezing it is the change, and how it slowly comes back to form. That is how you become resilient, you know that it's going to happen, you know that change is going to be hard. But it's going to take time for it to slowly bring

yourself back to form. Now there's another way that I like to think about a challenge and change. And so if you're at home listening to this show, or listening to this episode, go ahead and grab a piece of paper and a pencil. If you're driving, please don't do that. And obviously, if you're walking, try to remember to do it when you get home. If you write down the word challenge, go ahead, write it down. I'll give you a second. Okay, look in the middle

of that word. There are three letters, l, l, e, go ahead and circle those three letters. Now, if you take a look at those, and you pull them out in your mind, pull them out, you see the word change? Okay? So challenge and change. What's the point I'm trying to make here, think of those three letters, they ll E, as let life evolve. Okay, I'll say it again, those three letters let life evolve. Now, I've given you the mindset around how you can approach

change. Every time that you have something going on in your life, where there's a change coming up, and you feel the challenges of it, I want you to say to yourself, Li Li, I want you to say to yourself, LL E, let life evolve. And when you're really struggling, take a couple of deep breaths, l l e, you've got this. Now going back to the concept of the stress ball, it's gonna take time for you to bounce back. And that's okay. Now you may be thinking to yourself, I'm alone in this

challenge and change. No, not really quick google search of just the phrase challenge in change, take a guess, good in your mind real quick, 1.6 million results. When you Google the words challenge of change or challenge in change. There is an even an entire site dedicated to it and over in the United Kingdom, called the challenge of change, neuroscience in action and empowering performance. And on their website. I really love

it. They have this quote that says people tend to think that coping is managing to keep your head above water. resilient people are presumably those who can hold their breath longer when the flood rises. But that is just surviving. Real resilience is knowing there's no water to keep your head above. And Dr. Derek Roger was right in

that quote. And the reason that he was right, is that if you really want to be a resilient person, you need to know that the floodwaters going to come and that there is really no way to keep your head above water. Now you just have to manage through the change. Now you're probably saying yourself, Jay, come on. Are there really steps that I can take to manage big changes whether I see them coming or not? Absolutely, you know, me, I'm gonna, I'm gonna

reference an article. And this was a really good one from psychology. today.com this article was by Dr. Stephanie circus 10 ways to cope with big changes. And I love the little slogan, the subtitle changes in that bubble. Here's how to come out of it a better person. Okay, here we go. Tip number one, acknowledge that things are

changing. Now, once you acknowledge that things are changing, it makes it a little bit easier to cope with the change itself if you go for the denial path, and we know that denial is extremely powerful, and it helps protect us in lots of lots of ways. But don't do that here when you got a change coming up. Number two, and I appreciate this one, realize that even good changes can cause

stress. And you go back to me and my big move my wife, and I'm empty nest in it and moving to Massachusetts, that's a good change. She has an amazing new job, I get to pivot and do something different with my life. It doesn't mean that along the way over the next six months, as we're preparing for that move, that there's not going to be stress along the way. The truth is, whether it's a good change, or bad change, stress is just how your body reacts to that change. And guess

what, it's okay. It really is okay, to be stressed, everybody goes through phases where they're stressed in life. Alright, tip number three, keep your regular schedule as much as

possible. And what the tip means by that is like, try to have something that you can anchor your day around, have something that is going to anchor your morning, something is going to anchor your afternoon, something is going to anchor your evening, whether you're getting ready to have a baby or you're ready to have a new job or you're getting married, do something every day that kind of anchors your routine. So if you walk the dog every morning at 6am continue to

do that. If you always go and have a meal at like your favorite place a couple times a week continue to do that. If you always call a family member, or you have a specific meal that you'd like to do. My wife and I before kids used to like do date night for pizza, in the movie on Tuesdays, continue to do that, find a way to do that. Keep something anchored in your regular schedule as much as possible to help reduce the stress around the change. Tip number four, try to eat as

healthy as possible. And Lord knows I need to get back on track with doing that. Because what happens when we have stress in our lives? Where do we turn to? I can hear you saying to yourself right now, carbs, bread, muffins, cakes, cookies, anything that wants to give us joy, from a consumption point of view. And you know why we want carbs, guess what? It boosts serotonin. You know what, deplete serotonin, you got it. stress. So comfort foods, we all

wonder why we do it. It's because it's our body's natural reaction to stress. We want to release a chemical in our brain to calm us down to make us feel better. And carbs make that happen. People are probably still not eating well, and probably doing other things to release that serotonin in the brain. That's what happened with stress. So that was Tip number four, try to eat as healthy as possible. Tip number five,

exercise. And I'm not talking about running like marathons or long distances, just get up and move. Even if you take a walk around the block or walk around your house. Get up and move. The more that you're active, the more the motivation will kick in while you're active. Think about if you ever get on a kick of cleaning your house, for example, you get go and go and

go. And like all of a sudden you're cleaning out this closet and cleaning out that closet, you're cleaning up the kitchen, the activity of your body actually motivates you to continue doing what you're doing. Number six, and this is huge. Number six, seek support. For me, this should be number one, because no one gets through life alone. Seriously. Ask a

neighbor, ask a friend. And if you think you know what, there's no one out there to help me there is you'd be surprised how likely somebody is to help you if you ask for the help. So go ahead and seek that support. Number six, seek support. All right, number seven, write down the positives that have come from this change. Have you met someone new? Do you have a new job Have you decided to change the way that you eat or your workout habits, make a list?

Write down what it is that makes you feel good about this change. Change is all about opportunities to grow, whether it's a good change or bad change, it really is about the opportunity to grow and acknowledge how things are becoming better as a result of the change. And again, whether it's good change or bad change, acknowledge it, write it down, figure out what is the positive side of the change. Number

eight, get proactive. That means if you see the change coming, you know take charge work preventatively to overcome what may be coming or what may be stressing you out about it. In the case of my family, we've already started cleaning out closets. We've cleaned out the attic, the garage, we've started to have the house painted. Now we've got the big things done, and so we can start to focus on the little things that we need to tweak around the house in

prepper. For our big move, and whatever you do, don't be reactive. If you see change coming, or you know that you have to have change in your life, whether it's a new job, or a family change, don't be reactive, be proactive and taking action around the change, don't wait. And if the change in your life is something that's not going well, then tip nine is for you vent. But to a point, again, this goes back to having support group, we talked about it in Episode Two about New

Year's resolutions. Again, no one goes through things alone, you may feel like you're going through things alone. But you're better off if you have a support group and people to talk to you. But don't over talk. Okay, don't vent so much that it becomes your mindset. Because once you do that, then that mindset goes into your subconscious, it becomes part of your thinking when you're not awake, and it continues to make you be reactive to the change. And finally, number 10. And this is

a good one. It's a hard one, back away from social media, not this podcast, though, back away from social media. And what I mean by that is when we have a challenging time in our life, or some change that's coming up, we gravitate to social media, especially now when a lot of us are being at home, we can't be with our friends or family members. We gravitate there, because we're looking for some sort of feedback on the chain.

So if I go ahead and post something that's happening in my life, and people respond to it in a positive way, it makes me feel better. But what also happens on social media, if you're going through a difficult time, and you see the highlight reel of everybody's lives on Facebook, or Instagram or elsewhere, you start to feel bad

about yourself. So if you're going through a stressful moment, and you've got a lot of things going on in your life, do me a favor, back away from the social media, put the phone down. And think about going for that walk that we mentioned, think about doing some exercise. Think about meditating, I mentioned the calm app before, I'm a big proponent of that really helps clear the cobwebs out of your brain. So just do something different step away. And finally, a little bonus tip,

we'll call it. Tip 11. And I said this before, I'll say it again, give yourself a break. Don't beat yourself up. There's nothing in the handbook of human beings that says you have to function at 100% all of the time. You don't. I make mistakes. I'm not perfect, you're not perfect. Everybody in the world is not perfect. And one way that I like to cope with this. If you know me, personally, I love to laugh, I love to cut up. So the more laughter that's in your life,

the better off you'll be. As everybody knows, laughing increases dopamine in your brain, guess what, it also increases serotonin. So you can step away from the carbs. If you laugh more. And if you get out to exercise, then you're releasing endorphins. The point I'm trying to make here is that everybody goes through change. Change is hard. There's no denying it. But there are steps you can take to help overcome the challenge of change, and just let life evolved. You can

do it, I believe in you. The next time you have a big challenge, just remember those three letters let life evolve. But then also go back to the points of this show three main points I want you to take away. Acknowledge the change or the stress in your life. Try to keep a regular schedule. And whatever you do, please, please take care of yourself. It's the only way that you will overcome whatever it is in your life that's causing the stress whenever the challenges or whatever the

change is in your life. take time for yourself. Now if you would like to continue the dialogue of the 180 degree pivot, and the challenge of change will then connect with me. You can find this podcasts page on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you just need to search positivity on fire. Also, make sure to include the link to all three sites of the show. in the show notes you have access to them. But hit me up. Be happy to have a conversation. Be happy to pump you up. Be happy to be

in your corner. Everybody needs somebody in their corner and I'm happy to do that for you. And in closing, thank you for being here today. Your gift of time listening to me means the world to me. And as always remember be well be happy, be you and until next time, may your quest for positivity begin today. If you like today's episode, please give us a five star rating and subscribe today. For more on my positivity quest. Follow me at positively underscore j on Instagram and have an amazing