Change: Lori Adams-Brown on Navigating Change with Coping Strategies for Difficult Transitions

Transcription

Welcome to the Aworate of Difference podcast . I'm Lori Adams Brown, and this is a podcast for those

who are different and want to make a difference . Margaret Mead said, never doubt that a small group of

thoughtful , committed citizens can change the world . Indeed , it is the only thing that ever has. Today

we're talking about change , and in this series , we're talking about change in every episode right now. But

on this episode , I wanted to take a chance to just have a little conversation with you myself about

change . We're going to talk about coping with change . We're going to talk about why change is

something we must face, both good and bad. And we're going to talk about some of the things that I've

learned along the way that have helped me. And I would really love to hear from each of you after you

hear this episode about anything that you would add from your own perspective . I'd love for this to be an

episode that you share with a friend , maybe that's walking through change or family member as you're

walking through change together as a way to help you have a conversation with your friends and family

and loved ones about change itself . And I would love to hear back from you on your perspective and your

thoughts around change . I also, before I did this episode , I was having dinner with my family and I asked

my oldest son to tell me what he thought about change . So I'm going to be sharing that in a little bit

because he had some great insights . But first off, I just want to read a couple of quotes around change .

There's a Spanish proverb that says, a wise man changes his mind , a fool never will. Maya Angelou , the

famous poet , said, if you don't like something , change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude .

And so we're going to talk a little bit about that today. How can we change our attitude about change ?

It's definitely something that comes our way on a daily basis in small ways and then in our lifetime in big

ways, over and over again. When we think about it, welcome change isn't so much the part we struggle

with , is it? I welcomed the change of welcoming into our home each of our three children . I have to

admit , I was not super thrilled about the fact that I was expecting twins , because that felt a little bit of an

overwhelming change . And I think every pregnancy has its own feeling of overwhelm . But it turns out

that change that was brought into our family has been such a wonderful blessing each of our children . I

was not one of those people who ever wanted to get married . I really just was a very self sufficient ,

independent person who didn't feel like I needed to be married to do the things and have the life I

wanted to have. But the welcome change that came into my life was I met my husband Jason when we

were in college , and suddenly I realized that was a change that I wanted . It had a lot of fear in terms of

what that was going to mean. I think many people go through that as you're trying to figure out , is this

the person I want to spend the rest of my life with ? That wasn't the hard part for me. It was mostly just

the idea of for the rest of your life being tied to the decision making with this particular person . But it

turns out that change in my life has been one of the best decisions I ever made, and it continues to

contribute to my flourishing and the flourishing of others that we know together as a couple because of

the ways we've lived life together , in ways that I'm fully convinced are better than I would have done on

my own. And as a person who really appreciates teamwork and the opinions of others , many people

throughout my life, especially my husband , have helped me walk through changes that were difficult .

And we're going to spend a little time with an exclusive interview that I'll do with each of you who are our

patrons , the Patreon supporters , where I'll dig into a little more in a personal way, how I cope through

some of the biggest change that happened in my life. But for the purpose of this episode , we're just

going to walk through , kind of at a high level, different thoughts that I have around change and how I

have navigated those . As many of you know, I'm a third culture kid, which means change was something

that was a part of my life growing up quite a bit , moving to new schools . I was in Costa Rica for part of

my early schooling in elementary school , and then when I was still in elementary school , I moved to

Venezuela, and I was an international school there . Anytime you grow up in international school , change

is constant because people are constantly moving in and out for expat jobs in some places really last for

just two years. Especially military families are often moving out and in every two years or so, and then

the missionary families are going on frills anywhere between two and four years at a time and then

coming back again, that kind of thing . And so change in terms of my friendships was happening quite

often . Although I feel very blessed that I have had some friends that I've had ever since fifth grade when

I first moved to Venezuela that are still people I consider friends . So change has been a part of my life for

sure. So I had to, at a young age, learn what it meant to walk through change . And I picked up a few

things along the way, and I would say in my career I've had to learn a lot about change management and

different leadership styles , organizations do things in their own unique way. Every culture has a different

way. Every work culture , every organizational culture has a different way of handling change and it has to

be managed well. We all have been in situations where a change just kind of happened from the top

down and it was very centralized and it was not sort of socialized or as our Indonesian friends would say,

you have to associate sassy something . You have to kind of have conversations before big changes roll

out so that it kind of doesn't hit people is so difficult . And then often thinking about how change rolls out

in an organization if it's not welcome is especially fragile and challenging and can really affect the

morale of an organization . Case in point here in Silicon Valley, many tech companies have made

announcements that people are coming back to the office and it may be a certain amount of days per

week, two days per week. Or for some people , when it kind of rolled out earlier on, for people with more

hands on positions and manufacturing or engineering , it happened earlier than it did for others . But all of

that can feel kind of sudden if it's not been expected . And so I'm going to talk about five different ways I

have found that change is something we can cope with when it's not easy to handle . And I think change ,

like we said, is an important thing that we walk through . It's not insignificant in any way, but it's also just

an inevitable part of life. It can be challenging though , to cope with at times . And so here's some

strategies that may help you cope with change and I offer them to you and once again would love to hear

what has been helpful in your life that you've discovered . Number one, I would say we have to pay

attention to our emotions and that's something that has been not the easiest for me. I'm a strong tea on

the Myers Briggs , I'm more of a thinker , but doesn't mean I don't have feelings . I certainly do and I'm a

very empathetic person and I really care about my friends and family in a very deep way. But it can

sometimes be hard to recognize emotions . And so I've learned some tools earlier in my life that sort of

helped me walk through that and in the last several years, for sure have had a therapist helped me kind

of understand how we can have a range of emotions around change that could be everything from

excitement to anxiety, sadness , fear. And really digging deep into those things is what can help us

recognize this is what's going on. And I would say recognizing emotions for me particularly meant paying

attention to my body and what my body was saying to me. And that's not something I was really raised

to understand . I was definitely I think many of us probably are in that category that you just sort of make

decisions with your brain and then you're just being very logical about things . I'll bring up here with my

oldest son, who is a real brainiac . He's studying aerospace engineering and getting straight A's in

college . And he's just a really smart dude , very, very knowledgeable , and has just been a collector of

knowledge really since he was a baby. He just has this uncanny way of just remembering things and

learned his alphabet early and all the things . He's one of those his brain just absorbs a lot of information .

And so when I asked him, what are your tips around handling change ? He's been writing a research

paper somewhat along these lines for his English class in college this semester . And so he's had that

kind of on his mind as he's been doing some of the research . And he said it's important to rationalize it,

right , and to think about all the facts around it and research it and get as close to understanding the

change as you can and figuring out how it affects you. But he said it also can be really harmful if you

start to change your identity around that change . So that we don't want to automatically jump into , I am

this kind of person , therefore , because of this change . But you wanted to be more thoughtful about it.

He's an Enneagram Five, and I know Enneagram Fives are just very much withdrawing their thoughts ,

and that's how he is. And so I found that very insightful . So on the one hand, we want to recognize our

emotions , but we also want to be thoughtful about those emotions by using our brain to recognize them ,

right ? And it's important to acknowledge and just validate your own feelings . Allow yourself to feel

through them with a lot of self compassion and with curiosity instead of judgment . And that can be hard

for some of us, especially certain personality types . I'm thinking of twos and threes . I've known fours

even. Sometimes that can be really hard on yourselves . And I just want to say, if you are the kind of

person that really is struggling with self compassion around how you feel about change , I would just

invite you to stay curious about that . And it's in feeling through it sometimes that we can get to the other

side and really embrace the change . The second one, I would say, is to focus on the parts of the change

that you can control . There's so much within our process around change that's out of our control and

that can feel very helpless and frustrating . I remember when I was 15 and my mom was pregnant with my

younger brother and had to be medevac out of Venezuela and I was a freshman in my international

school , and life was just good . I just joined the volleyball team, or just been invited to join the volleyball

team, and we were going to be playing with other international schools . I was doing really well in my

French class and loved it. I had great friends and was about to go on beach retreat with the other TCKs

that I knew at this beach house in Kata Beach. And all of a sudden I found that I was going to be having

to go to the United States for a particular unknown amount of time to help with what was happening with

my mom and my younger brother because of that dangerous situation . And I don't know, I have twin 15

year olds right now and that's not the easiest time to be thinking about how big change is affecting

others . That level of the teenagers is mostly focused on how it affects you. But my parents were very

kind and sent me to a therapist and I only met with her once, but I remember very clearly what she said

to me is, you have two choices around this change . Do you know what they are? And even at 15 I was

like, yeah, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. And that sort of just stuck with me until now. I

just realized there's a lot I can't control about the situation . But I did start to focus on the things I could

control and that's really just been great advice for me. Change can often make us feel so out of control

that when we start to work in the areas of our circle of control , such as how we react , how we respond ,

our attitude , we can start to take action and make plans, make strategic moves where we can. Instead of

feeling helpless , overwhelmed and trapped , that feeling of being trapped is a horrible feeling . And I

know, especially for those enneagram sevens out there , which is my wing , I'm an eight with a wing

seven. Feeling trapped is just like a horrible feeling for sevens. Focusing on what you can control can

really change how you handle change itself . The third thing I would say is staying flexible and adaptable .

Certain personality types find this easier than others , but one of the key things about coping with

change really is this and to stay open minded , embracing new opportunities instead of resisting them ,

staying curious about new opportunities . As a lot of times we react emotionally something new that's

brought our way because of fear or not understanding it. And we're often afraid of what we don't

understand and what the outcomes could be. But if we can have a posture of being flexible and

adaptable , often we find that some of those moments that we can take a risk have actually been some of

the times in our lives where we stepped into some of the most beautiful parts of our lives. For me, like for

example , getting married and having children , those were really scary things for me. They weren't parts

of my plan. But when I became more flexible and adaptable about opening up my heart to those things ,

they are some of the best things in my life that I would never want to have said no to. The fourth thing I

would say is it's really important to have a practice of caring for yourself . So practicing self care when

change happens . I know that when my twins were born , I had been on a couple of months of bedrest and

then I had a three year old at the time who was curious and wild and just learning and smart and wanting

to examine everything in the house like a little scientist all the time . And so it was a bit stressful to add

two more babies and all the diapers and all the things going on. And my husband was working on his

marriage and family therapy master's degree at that time and somebody that was in his classes with him

offered to get together to just give me basically free therapy because she needed to get her counseling

hours right for the degree , for the license or track she and my husband ran. And so I remember her

saying, as a mom with three very little ones, you're going to need to really focus on self care. And I didn't

know how to embrace that because definitely change had come into my life in a double blessing , but

also it brought a lot of exhaustion and stress . And so she was just very clear that and it was good advice ,

but it was hard to receive because all I was thinking about was caring for these two little ones and then

my three year old. But she said, Your body itself is their sustenance . I was breastfeeding both of them

and trying to be the full amount of nutrition for these two babies as I was nursing them every couple of

hours . And so she just said, practicing self care is so important . And that has been something over and

over again that I've had to work on. I know many moms do. We have a narrative in our culture , as many of

them , that expects mothers to just constantly give and give and give to everyone , not only in their own

family, but in the neighborhood and the community , at the PTA and our churches , our faith based

spaces , and just volunteer for free. And so that can be really hard, especially for moms to practice self

care. But when we have change coming to our life, it's really, really important . And so here I am

preaching to you about this because someone preached to me about it and I have to preach this sermon

to myself too. It's so important to practice and prioritize self care, especially in terms of transition . So if

you're about to make a big move across the world , or you're taking an expat assignment for the first

time , or you're repatriating back home, if you're sending your child off to college , if you're just getting

married if you're expecting a child and about to go through motherhood for the first time or have just

given birth any of these times of transition , it's just so important to make sure you kind of don't fill your

schedule in ways that make it hard for you to practice self care. So getting enough rest , even if you have

to get an app on your phone , a health app that reminds you it's time for bed. Thank you iPhone. And to

all of you who work on that , who might be listening , all my friends here in Cupertino and here that are

working on the iPhone, we thank you for this app, this health app that reminds us to go to bed, make

sure you eat well, eat healthy meals, get your vegetables , make sure you exercise . And in fact , if you can,

grab a friend or your kid or your neighbor or your spouse and do a walk around the neighborhood .

Sometimes processing the transition can be a bit traumatic . And so the bilateral movement of taking a

left step and a right step actually mimics the EMDR therapy that we can do for trauma . And so my

husband and I, when we went through a really traumatic situation a couple of years ago, just did a lot of

walking in our neighborhood and it was the bilateral movement and taking steps together that helped our

brains actually process that trauma . But in addition , we got exercise . So it's really important to keep

exercising and get some fresh air, get some vitamin D and to practice mindfulness or meditation . Maybe

you call it a quiet time . Maybe you call it your prayer time or time you read scripture in the morning or at

night or your lunch break . Whatever it is, it's just a practice , a time of thinking and allowing your mind

and your spirit to be open to receiving and mindfulness is a really hard one for me. My therapist , early

on, when I went through a challenging situation a couple of years ago with what happened at our church

here in Silicon Valley with spiritual abuse, my therapist that I was working on with DBT really said

mindfulness is something you really should consider to put into your life. I found it really hard to do that .

I even have an app on Ways on my phone , the setting for headspace for mindfulness . And my kids

always laugh at it because it sounds so cheesy. It's like feel your body in the seat of the car and talks

about the journey and not the destination . So my kids always laugh at me, but I need those reminders

because if not , my personality is just very action oriented and I want to get things done. And pausing to

be mindful and ask myself, how do my toes feel right now? Is it cold in here? Just paying attention to my

body as a way of grounding me is not easy. If you find this easy, I would love tips on how this is working

for you. So definitely reach out with those . But I found it very challenging to walk through this type of

self care. But I highly recommend it because it is helpful , especially for how walking through transition

can feel overwhelming . I know that one transition we went through was a very unexpected one a few

years ago when we were leaving Singapore . And I remember the day I found out something had changed

drastically in our situation there and we were probably going to have to consider something different

potentially . And I just felt like the floor fell out from underneath me. I felt like I was sort of on this

spinning ball and kind of standing on it and I couldn't figure out which way was north . It can be a lot of

disillusionment in times of transition where everything has been so stable and you love what life is like,

but then suddenly this change seems like it's coming and that is not always welcome . So this is an area

where mindfulness can really help as you practice self care. And lastly, I would say number five is seek

whatever support you can change . Can make us feel isolated and alone, but make sure that people that

care for you, that you have ways to reach out , like maybe just text somebody or send a WhatsApp to

somebody across the world . Or start a little group on Twitter with just the particular people . One of those

circles , I think that people that you kind of care that are more close to or maybe start your own little

Facebook group or that's private , some way of just checking in during when a transition or time of

change is really hard because it's so easy to feel isolated . It's so easy to especially if you're moving or if

you have a situation where you live somewhere and a lot of other people are moving , it can be easy to

start pulling away. This is something we've learned as TCKs growing up, that even international schools

that my three kids were in as TCKs we would often talk about is that when somebody's about to move,

you start to pull away emotionally in your heart , both the person who's moving and the friends that are

being left behind . And so everybody can start to feel isolated in that situation . And so it's really

important to seek support from others and to continue to give your heart to the relationships you have. I

mean, thank God for technology where we can stay in touch these days. Social media, for all its evils, is a

way to still be in touch , right ? And so different from back in the day when we had to write Aerograms and

wait two weeks till they would get to someone and then after they got it, then they would write theirs and

it would take two weeks to get back . So it was like a month . And I think I've mentioned this before on this

podcast , but my husband and I, even in the 90s when we were dating , and I was in Indonesia one

summer, and he was in the Philippines . He was writing me almost every day. Aragrams and they were

coming to the address of the family where they were sort of my host family. And so, yeah, we're that old

that we were writing . Arrogance . But it's important to seek support from others during our times of

change , and this may include just talking to a trusted friend or family member. Joining a support group is

also really helpful . And these can be online on Zoom . I'm in a sort of support group type thing right now

for nine months . We're in month eight . My husband's in one group with guys , and I'm in a group with

women , and it's through this center in Puerto Rico called Caneo. Highly recommended . Dan White Jr.

And his wife Tanya are a part of starting this , and it's for people who've walked through spiritually ,

abusive and toxic situations . And we read an article every week. Some of them have been articles written

by Chuck de Gro and different people that are experts on how to walk through this process of healing

from spiritual abuse. And every week we read an article and we interact with it through our writing with

each other in our little group . My group has a WhatsApp group and a Facebook private group , and then

we meet on Zoom once a week. And our leader of our group is a therapist . And she's wonderful . She has

to do a lot of mindfulness . She'll read prayers over us, and we interact with these articles , and then it's

going to end in a retreat in Puerto Rico next month , which I'm very excited to meet everyone in person

for the first time . But support groups like this . Or maybe you've come out of a cult recently and so

joining a support group for people who've been in a cult before , that's a huge change where you're

trying to come out of some of that gas lighting and trying to figure out how they told you things . Maybe

that all the other groups out there weren't as good as theirs . And so you're learning to find there are

other groups out there that are good , and so that kind of a support group is really helpful . Maybe the

change in your life is that you've recently walked through divorce and so joining a divorce care group . I

have a great friend here in Silicon Valley and Fremont who runs a divorce care group at her church in

Fremont , and she's a wonderful person and has really been able to help a lot of people with this kind of

support . But it's a significant change if you've walked through any type of abuse or domestic violence ,

joining groups where you can get support and this kind of change of trying to pick up the pieces of your

life and find hope again is really a huge thing to walk through . And you really do need support . So I would

say in the realm of support is also seeking professional help from a therapist or a counselor . I just really

want us to normalize therapy . If that's not a normal thing for you, I want to help you normalize it that we

are bodies , we are flesh , right ? And we go to the doctor if we have diabetes and we get our insulin right ,

or if we need surgery , we have a tumor and we want that taken out in one of our organs of our body. If

our heart , which is an organ, stops working , well, we need to get quadruple bypass from the surgeon

that knows how to do surgery on our hearts . And the brain is also an organ. And therapists are taught

how to help us with talk therapy or with DBT. All these different types of therapy that our brains and our

bodies , our souls , they're all connected . But therapists have specialties in how to help us walk through

change . This is something they do on a regular basis and are experts in. So all five of us and my family,

my husband and I and all three of our kids have all done therapy for years because we're always dealing

with change . If you change the oil in your car, is that scary ? No. Well, maybe it is. I don't know if you do it

yourself or maybe you're worried about getting ripped off, especially as a woman at the mechanic . I've

totally been there . But that kind of change is generally just it feels normal , right , to change the oil in your

car. But also if you go to get your car's oil changed and you want that tune up, it's not when it's broken .

You just need to maintain it. And so therapy can be a way of maintaining our lives or helping us take

risks , helping us walk through all the things that life brings . So, yes. Remember, though , that coping with

change is not an overnight thing . It's a journey . It's a process . It takes time . It takes effort on our part ,

intentionality , to adjust to the new situations and our lives, both good and bad. And I just want to ask you

to be patient with yourself and remember that you are capable of adapting and thriving and flourishing in

the face of all kinds of change , whether it's hard change , big change , little change , good change ,

welcome change . You have what you need. And one of the things that's been probably super helpful in

big changes , whether it's change I needed to implement as a leader in an organization or it's changed in

my own life, where we were trying to get to a particular place and we had a dream or a vision goals and

we weren't quite there yet. And just having a strategic posture toward what might come our way that we

wanted to be available for. When change is on the horizon and you see it coming . Or you see that it's

needed . Often , just like, shrinking the change down to small bite sizes can be really helpful . So I do not

like to clean my house. I never have. Even as a child . That's not something I find therapeutic . I would

never be a Marie Kondo, although I'm very relieved that even Marie Kondo is sort of learning that it's

okay to relax. Good for her. I mean, when children come into your life, they're just really messy, even

teenagers . I don't feel like my kids were better , at least no particular names. But one particular kid was

much cleaner when they were younger. And now that they're a teenager , it's not as cool to want to be

like mom and dad when they're little and they want to do chores . So I feel like in some ways, it's a little

messier than it's ever been, especially during COVID in that year and a half of online school , right . Gen Z

has really handled a lot of change . We should be going to them and asking them how they handled it,

because they've had to go to online school and then they've had to go back to school in person with

math on and all these different changes in their lives at such a young age. But I would say one of the

things that has been somewhat helpful is when I think about cleaning my whole house all at once, it's

overwhelming . I think even if you love cleaning , that can feel overwhelming . But to say there's advice out

there to set a timer for five minutes , I've done this with my children , too. Like, just do five minutes and

sometimes that's all you do, but occasionally you're like, you know what ? That felt really good . I can tell

what I did in five minutes . And then an hour later, you've cleaned up a lot . Or if your house is small,

maybe your whole house. Yeah. Shrinking the change is another way to help. It just have bite size and

then you take one step and the next step and just sort of scaffold it down a little bit . Because big change

is overwhelming for most of us. Even if it's welcome , like planning a wedding , you have to take it in small

chunks and eventually it all comes together . So this is my offering to you around change . I would love to

hear your thoughts , though . Really would love to hear how you have coped with change . And if you have

any thoughts that you would be willing to share with everyone , I mean, you can of course just DM me on

Twitter and say, here's my thoughts around change . But if you would like to be a part of a community , we

have a patreon community where I would love to discuss this . So please jump on in there . You can join

for as little as $5 a month . And I'm going to be releasing an exclusive episode around this concept of

change by talking a little more deeply about a personal issue around change . That was a very

unwelcome and difficult probably one of the most difficult changes that I've had to walk through and

sort of give how that went for me and what steps I took , particularly around that situation . That helped .

Me to be able to cope with that change and ultimately be where I am now, which is having walked

through a lot of healing and flourishing and all of that . So, yes, I would love to have you. You are

absolutely welcome in our patreon community . There's some great people in there and I'd love to have a

great discussion around change if you'd like to hop in. So yes, otherwise you can also just start the

conversation over on Twitter if you're there or in our Facebook group . I'm not as often in our Facebook

group because Facebook is still taken over my Facebook page and commandeered that for a while and

it's just really hard to get it back because of all of their steps apparently happens to other podcast hosts

on occasion too. So that's where we're a little more into our patreon community right now. So I'd love to

have you over there and I'd like to give you some of the free merch that's there . If you stick with us for a

little bit , you have options to get all kinds of fun stuff like mugs and t shirts and tote bags and different

things . And that patreon community is also something that it means a lot to me because it helps me

produce this podcast for you. And I really enjoy doing it and I enjoy this community . You are such a bright

spot in my week. I really enjoy each of you who listen , shout out to the people last week who engaged

with me on Twitter to let me know you really enjoyed last week's episode about the Samaritan woman

and even listened to it twice . I heard someone say that's all someone say that on Twitter and shared it

with people and we're trying to talk to others about it in different ways. So I would love for this to be a

podcast that you share with people around you as you're walking through change to help start

conversations and would love to know how it's going . This community is for you, and it blesses me

incredibly to have you in this community with us. So thank you for all the changes you're bringing around

the world , the changes you're bringing into my life and into the life of others . And I just want to wish you

all the very best as you continue to walk through change wherever you are in the world . All right ? Let us

know how you're doing and how change is happening for you and we'll talk again next week. Bye, everyone .