Change is inevitable.

That phrase sounds trite, and perhaps even cliché, but it’s true, and everyone knows it.

Unfortunately, knowing it and accepting it are two very different things, and the latter is orders of magnitude more difficult than the former. Most people are of the mindset that things aren’t supposed to change. While everyone has a different threshold, all of us crave order, stability and predictability to one degree or another, and change disrupts that. It throws our world into chaos and uncertainty, which increases stress.

There’s really only one way to deal with change, and that is acceptance. Things change. That’s the nature of the world we live in, and there’s no use fretting about it or worrying over it. Doing that will only get you down. Besides, who says all change is bad? What it really represents is an opportunity.

Sure, when your world changes around you, there will invariably be an adjustment period, but more often than not, change brings with it new and unexpected opportunities, which are good things. Sometimes, chance brings things you never would have had the opportunity to experience or take advantage of if it hadn’t happened.

Of course, it goes without saying that not all change is good, but worrying about it isn’t going to keep it from happening. Again, the best thing you can do for yourself is to accept it, evaluate it with honest eyes, look for new opportunities hiding within the changing landscape and deal with the downsides as they come.

That is a far better, far healthier attitude to take than to allow the fact of inevitable change to get you down. If you go down that road, you doom yourself to a life of depression and uncertainty, and the more you try to hold onto the way things are, the more frustrated you’ll find yourself becoming. Don’t do that to yourself. There’s a better way!