When someone comes in for one-on-one coaching or marriage counseling, I always pose one question: “What is your objective?” When I do, I’m looking for that answer that can instill fear in almost everyone: Change.

Change is the endgame of all therapy and coaching. However, change is so difficult to embrace because it always comes at a price. It always makes you wonder what its effects will be in each area of your life. Crises precipitate change; they’re opportunities to know yourself better and to decide the direction where you want to take your life.

When change is thrust upon you, keep in mind the following strategies:

•    Frame everything that happens as positive, as new opportunities and new challenges, not as problems.

•    Be optimistic. Positive Psychology, the latest psychological school, is showing through its research that positive thinking is a character quality that separates successful people from conformists.

•    Instead of becoming sedentary, stay active. Sitting on the sofa to cry over spilled milk will not get you anywhere; what’s worse, you will hurt production of serotonin, the messenger of happiness in your brain.

•    Practice gratefulness. That is, even though the reason for it may not be evident, give thanks for everything that happens, good and bad; for what you have and for what you have lost, and most of all, for being alive and free to continue building your life – your greatest work!

Recommended reading:

La seguridad emocional, Gael Lindelfield
Optimismo inteligente, María Dolores Avila
Más allá de la autoestima, Sheyla Morataya