WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGES

EmNin Books

Chapter One

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If something important around you is changing right now, I'm sorry.

I know how comforting it can be to finally get some things into place. I also know how it feels to yearn to have those things stay in place. And I know how upsetting it can be when they don't, when they won't, when they just can't.

It is obviously more than "upsetting" if what has changed are situations and conditions affecting your SAFETY.

If you suddenly find yourself without a livelihood, unable to find work, desperately behind in your bills, maybe even losing your home, you are dealing with more than just the feeling that "things have changed." You're dealing with feeling that "everything is lost." This is not simply a feeling of being disrupted or discombobulated, this is a feeling of being threatened.

Even if you're not facing change on that order of calamity, but a significant change in your life nonetheless, threat could be very much a part of your experience. Most of us feel that our very way of life is threatened when we face any kind of major change, especially if it is around the Big Three:

RELATIONSHIP MONEY HEALTH

If one of these things is changing, it can be very challenging. If two of these three are changing, it can be incredibly difficult. If all three are changing at the same time, it can be utterly devastating.

I know this.

I've lived it.

All three. I've lived through all three. At once.

Talk about feeling threatened ...

... I broke my neck in a car accident (Health), had to stop working through months of rehabilitation while an insurance company tried to figure out every way possible to reduce or eliminate compensation (Money), all the while I was working through the pain of separation from my life partner and our children as our lives dramatically changed course (Relationship).

Talk about feeling threatened ...

I wound up homeless for a year, living in the weather, walking the streets panhandling for pocket change and collecting soda cans and beer bottles to scrape together enough money to eat (some days it didn't go so well), with a sleeping bag and a tent, two pair of jeans, three shirts, and a few odds and ends as my only possessions.

I know about losing one's sense of safety. I know about standing by helplessly and watching life fall apart, changing utterly and completely in two weeks' time.

Yeah, I know about that. Trust me.

And I know a little something about how to deal with it, too. Not that I did such a good job at the time, mind you, but then again, this book is about what I've learned since.

We're going to talk here about what I've picked up from some very authoritative sources on how to deal with change. Because that's what this is all about, at the bottom line. It feels like we're dealing with collapse, calamity, catastrophe ... but those are all outward effects created by a single cause: Change. Something is not the way it was before. Something has been altered. Irrevocably, immeasurably, fundamentally, and absolutely.

A lady who is going through huge turmoil in her life sent me an e-mail today. She is aware that I'm writing this book and she said, "I don't know that I would even have identified what is happening to me as 'change.' When you are in the middle of it, when everything is falling apart around you, you can't identify it or name it as 'change.' It feels more like THE END ... everything you know is coming to an end and there is nothing after. If you'd asked me before I heard about your book if I was experiencing change, I would not have defined it that way. I don't know what I would have called it, other than to say that life was ruined, finished."

This lady, whose name is Leah and who gave me permission to quote her in this book, added something very insightful.

"Change is scary," she said, "but that's different from feeling like it's 'Game Over.' I looked up 'change' in the dictionary. Change indicates that something new is coming. This is a very different perspective from what some people (who are facing calamity in their lives) might have, and it might be helpful to first assist them to even identify with the fact that what is happening is CHANGE; to understand the very definition of change."

That's good, Leah. That's good stuff right there. So I tore apart the first chapter that I had written and came back with this one. I realized Leah was right. So I'm going to define CHANGE as I am using the word:

Change is the shifting of any circumstance, situation, or condition, physical or nonphysical, in such a way that the original is rendered not merely different from what it was, but altered so radically as to make it utterly unrecognizable and impossible to return to anything resembling its former state.

In other words, we are talking about a major shift here; we are not talking about changing one's clothing or the menu for lunch or the evening's TV agenda. We are talking about life-changing events-the kind that hurt, the kind that do damage, the kind that kill dreams and ruin plans and disrupt futures-and we are talking about healing them with equally life-changing events. We are saying that when everything changes, sometimes the best thing to do is to change everything. Not only everything in the physical, but everything in the non-physical. This would include your emotions, your thoughts, even your truths.

We're talking about a complete overhaul here, from top to bottom, inside and out. After all, your life has been turned darned near inside out anyway, so why not finish the job? Only now, in the way that you want it to feel, rather than in the way that it feels you are being forced to accept....

As we embark on this exploration I hope you can feel that I understand at least a little of what's going on with you, so that you know that you're not hearing about all this from somebody who has no idea what you're going through-some "fix-it guru" sermonizing at you from the mountaintop who has never been anywhere near where you are right now. I hope you can feel that even if nothing else is going right in your life, your having picked up this book is at least one good thing. One good thing has happened today.

We can start with that. We can begin from there. We're going to stand side by side, you and I, and put your whole life back together again-in a new way, in an even better way.

Dare I promise that? Well, I'm saying, "Let's try." Let's see what we can do. You've got nothing to lose, right? So let's try. Let's make your having picked up this book be not only one good thing that happened today, but one of the best things that's happened in your life!

What do you say? Want to do it? Want to try?

If you're too tired, too beaten down, too exhausted from the battle of life to even try, would you just do this ...? Would you just try to try?

If you'll try to try, I think we can make it. And I'll promise you this. You don't have to go any faster than you want, any faster than you feel comfortable with.

I'm going to give you...