Originally featured in the Monday State of Mind newsletter.
In my home country of England, the word “coronavirus” has actually come at a perfectly fitting time to replace another word we could barely avoid: “Brexit”.
Brexit was like our warm up to this. Four years of being unable to avoid a topic that caused everybody nothing but stress, frustration and sadness, where we’d look to anything for any kind of escape from it; now onto another - which causes similar feelings, except there’s nothing we can do to escape it. At least with Brexit, the sports news was an escape. Now the only only sports news is that sport is cancelled.
Among the stress and frustration, another shared theme within all of this has been the fear of change and uncertainty. One of the few things that both sides of the Brexit debate had in common, was our reluctance to change – to hold onto the things we knew, which best represented our values, to which we’d become emotionally attached, in what was a highly emotionally-driven debate.
This, of course, is all very normal. Humans, in general, are not particularly enthusiastic about unforeseen change and uncertainty. Partly just because we’re lazy. If we’re used to doing things a certain way, it just adds something else to think about which we’d frankly rather not.
But then there’s also the emotional attachment to things we don’t want to let go of. Or the loss of the control we’d built up within our previous “normal”. And of course, the lack of belief that the “new normal” could be as good as the last.
I, for example, am not the only person I know who wasn’t particularly looking forward to having to stay at home in isolation for this. I liked what I had, it worked for me and I didn’t want to let go of it.
Yet now in fact, as for many others, I’m beginning to quite enjoy my new normal. I like not having to think about my commute, FOMO or wearing trousers. I adapted – just like many others have – and just like we always do.
The change process
In the 1960’s, a psychiatrist named Elisabeth Kubler-Ross came up with a 5-stage model for how we deal with grief – which has since been applied to other times when people are faced with a significant, unforeseen change. The model describes the process we go through, from the shock of receiving whichever news of change, to a range of emotions from denial, anger and sadness.
There are variations of this, known as the change curve or grief cycle, but here’s the core of it:
5 Stages of Grief, Kübler-Ross, 1969
I could never help but see some correlation to this, in watching the Brexit process unfold. The calls for a 2nd referendum. The protests. The guy who stood outside Parliament every day shouting “STOP BREXIT”. Many people went through this rollercoaster of emotions, within a situation from which coronavirus is, in the strangest possible sense, a bit of a break.
And of course, some things, from a moral perspective, we should fight to keep. The only problem comes when our fight to keep it has come too late. When we’ve been living under the assumption that things won’t change, only to one day wake up to find out that the world around us has been gradually shifting towards something we’d been casually turning a blind eye to.
The Netflix documentary, Joshua, for example, tells the story of the 14-year old Hong Konger, Joshua Wong, who fought against the Chinese government to stop the beginning of what he saw as a move away from democracy, towards a more authoritarian state. I won’t go into the details, but it’s an inspiring watch, whether you’re into that or not.
The point is, it was a moral cause he fought against that was worth fighting for. But the other point is, he saw it coming. Against all the odds, he noticed something that others didn’t and fought against it, before it was too late.
Equally, in some instances, the emotions which come with this “grieving process” are simply necessary and we have to go through them. To try and explain to somebody that they should just accept the death of a loved one, for example, will not do anybody any favours.
But generally speaking, in many or most situations, the denial, sadness and anger we feel are simply getting in the way of us adapting and making the most of whichever situation in which we find ourselves.
The new normal
Despite how much we may try to tell ourselves that things stay the same or should stay the same, the reality is that the only thing that is constant, is change itself. It’s a quote you’ve heard a million times, because it’s so accurate.
Despite how perfectly static our little lives may feel, the earth is constantly spinning on its axis. The seasons do not just change from one to the other. Every day, hour and minute is a shift in climate - we just categorise them, to make it easier for ourselves.
Over the past 10 years, the changes we’ve seen in society have been unprecedented. To think that, at the beginning of the last decade, the words iPad, Brexit and Instagram didn’t exist and the vast majority of people had never heard of Uber, Airbnb or an “ice bucket challenge”.
But none of these just appeared overnight. Change doesn’t just appear out of nowhere – it comes as a tipping point from the constant change that is always happening and evolving. Once we become more familiar with that and accept it, then not only can we react differently when it comes, but we can maybe even see it coming, before it does.
What will the next 10 years look like? Will there be a “new normal”? What even is the “new normal”? Is it happening now? Or is it coming later? Later as in…next month? Or next year?
Maybe the “new normal” isn’t a static culture but a constantly shifting, changing one, rolling with the technological, political, environmental and economical movements as they exponentially increase.
Maybe “settling into the new normal” is less about trying to make things stay the same and more about becoming comfortable with change – learning how to be adaptable.
The triple-A approach to change
Every situation is different. Some, more difficult than others. But no matter the situation, approaching change should come from a place of knowing that there are certain things we can control and others we can’t.
The three areas outlined below are about focusing on the things we can control and making the most of whichever situation we find ourselves in - so that, no matter the situation, we’re at least able to adapt and cope with change and uncertainty, better than we could if focusing elsewhere. They are:
Accept: Again - sometimes it's morally right and necessary to fight against change. But we should be aware of how much time we spend on resisting something which may be inevitable, when compared to time spent adapting to it.
In cases where it is, indeed, too late, resisting change can make things even worse. Even just in our heads, we can easily build frustration and a feeling of helplessness, by wishing that something wasn’t so, when it already is.
Away from specific situations, it can help to accept and observe that change is constant and all around us. Things don’t just happen out of nowhere. Neither coronavirus nor Brexit happened overnight. Observe that change is constantly happening, so to intervene before it’s too late to do so, or to adapt once it is.
Adapt: When change happens, our instinct can often be to blame people for it, wish it wasn't happening or wallow in misery that it is. For every moment we spend doing this, we’re losing out on improving and dealing with our new reality.
We always adapt. So rather than worrying about whether we will or not, moving straight to adapting, finding solutions, making the most of whichever situation comes, as it does, may put us in an even stronger position than we were in before.
Whether in the “new normal”, a Brexit Britain or an ended relationship, we should make a promise to ourselves that, no matter what comes, we’ll adapt and survive.
Appreciate: Lockdown has caused us to finally appreciate the little things we took for granted when we had them; like a hug, a restaurant, or being able to communicate with people face-to-face without the intensity and technical frustrations of a Zoom call.
When it's over, we'll miss the things we take for granted now; like not feeling the need to be doing things all of the time.
Our brains are constantly looking for new things, longing for old things, worrying about things that don’t exist or which haven’t happened yet - rather than focusing on what’s happening right now in the present moment and making the most of it.
We have to re-train our brains to do that, by actively taking a moment to focus on the things we’re grateful for, in whichever situation we find ourselves. Once we’ve accepted that what is happening now may not last forever, we can not only adapt to it but take a moment to appreciate what we have within it - and continue to do so, no matter what changes or “new normal” may come our way.
Uncertainty
When faced with change and uncertainty, it’s fairly natural for us to focus on the things that could go wrong, rather than those that could go right. This lack of belief is something which rears its ugly head throughout all areas of our lives, because our brains are hard-wired to look for danger and things that will cause us harm, instead of the nice, boring things.
It’s not to say that the negative outcome isn’t a plausible reality – it’s to say that it is one of a million plausible realities that we should be aware of.
No matter what the future holds, we will adapt. The sooner we’re able to accept that change is constantly happening, that we move from resisting change to adapting to it, and we start to appreciate each “normal” as it exists, then the better accustomed we’ll become to a constantly changing world.
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