The Way Things Used to Be
The team changed, the town changed, the friendship changed. Here's how to stop living in the version that's gone.
The café you loved closed. The team you liked got reshuffled. Your parents are older than they used to be, and so are you. Nothing dramatic happened, but the world you were comfortable in has quietly moved on without asking.
The old version becomes a measuring stick
Change hurts most when you keep the old version as a standard. Every new thing gets compared to it, and every comparison comes up short, because the past has an unfair advantage: it’s finished. You remember the good parts and none of the uncertainty you felt at the time.
Resisting change rarely stops it. It just means you experience the new situation as a list of what’s missing, instead of what’s actually there. Much of the discomfort is the same discomfort as not knowing how things will turn out. The old version felt safe because you knew its ending.
What helps is admitting the old version was temporary too. It only felt permanent because you were in the middle of it. The same is true of the people and places you assume will always be there.
Two lines on paper
Write down one change you’ve been resisting. Under it, write one thing that’s true about the new situation that wasn’t true before, good or neutral. Read both lines once, slowly. Then leave it there, because you don’t have to like the change today, only see it clearly.
That’s enough for today.
Continue reading
More in Control & Letting Go →