Change And Anxiety

This piece is reposted from the blog "My Two Cents: Thoughts of a Small Town Therapist"

Hayden took skydiving lessons. He went to lots of classes, packed and re-packed his parachute, and eventually the big day came. "Why am I so nervous? I'm really well prepared!" he asked the instructor. The instructor smiled.... "Because you still have to jump out of an airplane!"

Most of us are anxious about change. We feel we mustn't be ready if we're so anxious. We delay, we prepare, we wait for the day when there will be no anxiety with the new endeavor.

The truth is that anxiety is one of the things that DEFINES change. The trick is to allow it to come along for the ride, accepting it as a part of the process, the way your legs ache in the twentieth mile of a marathon even though you prepared properly. So, do your homework, prepare properly, and jump. You'll be just fine.