What Is It About Change That Scares Us?

How often have you sat at work, gazing out the bleary windows that haven’t been cleaned in forever, wondering about what else you could have done or be doing with your life? It’s not like there is something inherently wrong with your life, you just wonder about if you had taken another path or if a sea change presented itself in the future would you be bold enough to try?

I know for me the fear of not knowing if it’s the wrong decision seems to stop me from choosing something different. But until recently society made us feel like what we chose when we left school or in our twenties was the path that we had to stick to. My parents worked the same jobs for 40 years, not that they hated it, but they never thought about changing anything or trying something else.

Have you ever felt like this too?

We become comfortable in our world, it’s easier to just keep moving forward and often financially for a lot of people it is out of the question and sometimes with kids it is easier just to stay put.

If you are like me and live in Sydney, you just become part of the rat race. You finish school and there is pressure to go to university, study, work hard. I can still hear my father saying “you need a good job to get ahead in life, and it helps if you’re beautiful!” You fall into the race to rise to the top, earn good money, move out of home, get married, buy a house, have children. It seems we have mapped out our very existence and how it should be. Don’t get me wrong, I love being married and I love my children very much and I wouldn’t change it for the world but it wasn’t until I stepped off and spent time in other countries and smaller cities and country towns that I thought about if that was the life I wanted for me and my family? Did I want us to be constantly trying to get ahead, to compete with our friends about what car they were driving this week, or what new renovations they had completed this month. What if we had to work but had more time to smell the roses and appreciate what we have, to just slow it down a little.

We want to move out of Sydney, we have for some time but we have struggled with overcoming the hurdle of ‘what if it fails’. The feeling of what if we ruin something that isn’t bad but we hope to be better?

But what if it was better?

I think one of the first things to do is to completely change your mindset about it and not think about well what if it fails. Does it really matter if it fails? Sometimes it does especially if you have invested a million dollars into it. Eeeeeek! But thinking that if it doesn’t work out, we will just go and try something else. Being positive about treating it like an experience in life and not a hurdle. Teaching my kids to embrace change and try new things. God, I tell them to give things a go all the time and I don’t even follow my own advice!! I think this is the first step. Throw caution to the wind and take a chance! I guess one never knows whether it will be the right choice or not, sometimes you just have to put one foot in front of the other and see what happens.

Have you ever made a sea change with your family or thought about making that change?

I would love to hear other people who have uprooted their families and your decision making process