Some of us get pleasantly jazzed up when we are going through change. We feel enervated and excited about what is and will be happening. However, more often, I notice that people (including me and my clients) experience a lot of stress and anxiety with change. Even if we know that we will be just fine on the other side, the not knowing and transition parts can unnerve the calmest of us. Do you remember a change you went through recently? How was the experiencing part for you? Did things go smoothly? Or, did you, at times, feel stressed and out of sorts?

As a professional organizer, the work I do with my clients is all about change. We are changing habits, transforming spaces, and rethinking busy schedules. We are working towards desired changes. It is the work and the “changing” part that can be stressful. 

How does the change-related stress show up? It might look like:

• A short fuse

• An angry burst

• Frustration

• Sadness from loss

• Overwhelm from too many choices

• Exhaustion

• Worry

• Pushback

• Canceled appointments

• Slow-paced organizing sessions

• Indecision

• Crying

• Digging in

The bottom line is that very often, when we are experiencing change, we aren’t at our best. This can be magnified if the change is unexpected or imposed on us. When we choose to change, it can still be stressful, but sometimes that positivity and motivation can help reduce the stress factor.

The situations that seem most stressful for my clients are:

• Moving

• Renovating

• Downsizing

• Losing a loved one

• Going through divorce

• Experiencing a health challenge

How can you alleviate some of the change-related stress? You can do one or more of the following:

• Acknowledge that you’re going through a transition.

• Be extra gentle with yourself.

• Focus on the basics of sleep, exercise, nutrition, and hydration.

• Reach out for professional and personal support.

• Practice saying “no.” 

• Reduce the scope of your commitments.

• Meditate.

• Adjust your expectations.

• Do something fun.

• Do something relaxing.

• Celebrate the small successes.

What else have you experienced or noticed in yourself or others when going through change? What helps you alleviate change-related stress? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to comment and join our conversation.

Have ever tried to change a habit like putting your keys in a designated spot, being punctual, eating more vegetables, cutting out sweets, reducing your digital device dependency, or pausing before saying “yes” to requests? If so, you know how hard a habit change can be. You often start out determined and mindful, yet can get quickly derailed when you’re stressed, discouraged, or distracted.  I’ve personally experienced the trials and tribulations around my own habit changes. As a professional organizer, I support my clients’ change of habits, environments, and transitions during their getting organized journeys and see firsthand how much effort lasting change takes.

When you practice and repeat the behavior you desire, it becomes a habit. Most experts agree that simple habit changes generally take 21 days to establish, while more challenging ones such as weight loss or mindfulness practice can take at least six months.

 A while ago, I took a habit change course from the insightful psychologist and author, Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. He is co-founder of the Center for Mindful Living in Los Angeles. I appreciate his direct approach. In the seminar, he described six habits that lead to lasting change, which I will share with you. 

6 Helpful Habits That Will Boost Lasting Change

1. Relax

When you are relaxed, your focus, learning, thinking, and decision-making improves. These conditions create an environment that is conducive to lasting change. Develop awareness around feeling relaxed. Notice when you brace. Does it happen at specific times of the day or when you are around certain people? When you find yourself bracing, soften your body. In turn, it will relax and soften your brain.

2. Mindfulness & Focus

Practicing mindfulness reduces mind busyness, improves the clarity of thoughts, and increases productivity and the ability to focus. One way to practice mindfulness is to single-task. If you are doing an email, just email. If you are eating, just eat. If you are exercising, only exercise. Developing mindful awareness will be a benefit to the changes you seek.

3. Trust in Yourself

Self-compassion and forgiveness grow your emotional intelligence. When you trust yourself, it will quiet your inner critic, improve your sense of self-worth, and increase your resilience when you encounter obstacles. Take self-compassion breaks. Understand what you need to self-soothe. Forgive yourself for regressions, remain curious, and invite yourself to begin again. The route to new habits is not a straight path.

4. Savor

Positive emotions like joy, gratitude, and awe increase resiliency during challenging moments, improve physical health and increase happiness. Take joy breaks by savoring the good moments. Practice gratitude by making a daily list of things like the health of your family, lying down in your cozy bed, feeling the sun warm your body, or thinking about the loved ones in your life. Practice relational joy, which is witnessing other people experiencing good moments. Mentally send encouraging thoughts to them.

5. Accept Change

There will be ups and downs when it comes to change. Accepting the undulating pattern will help you get unstuck sooner, be more grateful at the highs, and more graceful at the lows. Stay present-focused. Get perspective on what matters right now. This will help you align actions with intentions.

6. Connect

Feeling connected is often the missing piece to sustaining change. When you are connected to others, you will feel naturally inspired to change, receive more support and accountability for your habits, and learn from others. A coach, mentor, family, or friend can be in your connection circle. Increase your sense of connection and positive emotions through journaling or doing loving-kindness meditation. When you visualize the link you have with others, you actually feel the connection. Do a relationship inventory. Think about the top ten people you are in contact with most frequently and rate them from one to ten. Ask, “Does this person inspire me to make positive changes in my life?”

The hidden success driver to make lasting change comes from not going it alone. Seek regular, ongoing guidance and accountability from a group, coach, family member, or friend. What helps you create positive habits? Do any of these ideas resonate with you? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to leave a comment and join the conversation.

Have you ever felt challenged when making a big or small change in your life? If so, did you encounter periods of doubt, stress, frustration, or overwhelm? Many experiences around change include discomfort at some point in the journey. After all, if we’re lucky, growth and insight happen along the change path. And usually, those don’t occur without some struggle.

In the latter part of last year, I embarked on a new project to combine and redesign my two websites into one. It wasn’t the first time I had done this type of project, so I knew it was accomplishable. In the end, while I am thrilled with how the new ohsoorganized.com site looks and feels, going through the change process had its challenges.  Now that I’m on the other side of it and have had time to reflect, I thought it seemed like a good time to share what I learned about going through change. Maybe you are making a change in your life. If so, I hope that something here will resonate and be helpful to you.

7 Lessons Learned About how to Navigate Change

1. Gather Your Team

You can make changes on our own, but I learned that creating a support team enhanced my experience. When you seek something different, you can significantly benefit from the expertise and wisdom of others. For the website project, I worked with the talented web designer, Tanya Moushi, who specializes in creating Squarespace websites. She clarified the project phases, explained what was or wasn't viable, and led me through the design phase to the launch of the new site. A while back, I hired the marvelous Word Press web designer, Janet Barclay, to evaluate my websites. While Janet didn’t directly work on my redesign project since she only does Word Press sites, the evaluations Janet did were useful guides as I considered the changes I wanted for my new website. Just as essential to my team were family, friends, clients, and colleagues. They helped me notice the things I overlooked, provided sanity checks, and gave me moral support during times of doubt.

2. Expect Some Mess 

During a conversation with Tanya in the early design phase, I expressed some frustration with how that process was going. I wasn’t happy with the initial color and mood board. She gently said that the “Creative process is very messy.” I loved that reminder because while I knew it was accurate, I had forgotten it at that moment. This is similar to what my organizing clients experience. When we are organizing a space, it often looks worse before it improves. If they feel discouraged, I remind them that things get messier before they get better. And clearly, that goes for redesigning websites too. I remembered other design projects I’ve done, like designing my book, creating previous websites, or redesigning my logo. There was always trial and error. These are not one and done processes. What I appreciated about Tanya was that she hung in there and experimented with me until we got the colors, images, fonts, layouts, and functionality working as I wanted. And yes. It was messy. But from the experimentation and chaos, we created something beautiful and functional.

3. Adjust Expectations

Projects won’t always go as planned. When I received the initial proposal for the website redesign, the timeline showed slightly less than a one-month turnaround from design to final launch. The schedule included three phases. There was technical (like transferring domain name and importing files,) design (such as gathering design inspiration and building a preview site,) and quality assurance (as in back end training and going live.) The phases took longer than anticipated. The elapsed time was over four months. Like most projects, unexpected things came up. So as the deadlines changed, Tanya and I discussed them, course-corrected, and readjusted the expectations. This was critical. In the end, the timing worked out great because I launched the site as the year and decade changed. So even though that hadn’t been the original plan, it ended up being a terrific outcome timing-wise.

4. Work Those Lists

It helped me to have several lists for a redesign project of this magnitude. There were the updated password lists, things to discuss with Tanya lists, design comments and idea lists, site review lists, how to work the back end lists, and, ultimately, the final punch list. The lists kept me on track and also provided places to record thoughts and ideas in an organized way. It was Tanya’s idea to upload the punch list to Google docs so that we could discuss and cross off items as completed. It was a collaborative way of communicating, which worked out beautifully. I remember when that last item was crossed off. It indicated to me that things were completed and it was time to embrace the change fully.

5. Be Patient With Learning

One of the issues that had prevented me from redesigning sooner was knowing that I needed time to invest in learning a new platform. I migrated my sites from Squarespace 5, which I knew how to navigate, to Squarespace 7, which has an entirely different back end. I had confidence that I could learn it, but I didn’t know how much time it would take me. Tanya did several walkthroughs with me and also created a few how-to videos for making edits and creating blog posts. Also, Squarespace has excellent tutorials and customer support. It was awkward at first but got more comfortable with each edit. The upside is that I love learning. Having to add a new set of skills to my toolbox has been one of the fun surprises of this process.

6. Acknowledge Loss

While the website redesign was needed and desired, I was surprised by some feelings of loss that I experienced. The othersideoforganized.com site, which no longer exists, was created when I wrote my book ten years ago. I started blogging on that site and enjoyed many wonderful conversations with my readers. It was a familiar and happy place to visit and converse. The previous ohsoorganized.com site was redesigned in 2011 from the original site that launched in 2001. Even though with the website change, I was gaining many positives like being mobile-friendly, moving to the updated Squarespace 7 platform, and having a more modern design, I liked what I had. It worked. However, due to technical issues and an old platform, it was time to change. I knew that. Even so, part of me wanted to hold on to what was comfortable and familiar. During the process, even though I was pushing myself to be open to new possibilities, I also recognized that I was digging in and trying to hold on to what I had. Acknowledging and noticing these feelings of loss during growth and change was helpful. I could see, feel, and appreciate them. And then I let go so that I could embrace the new.

7. Appreciate the Blooms

The big website change has happened, and I am thankful. After months of designing, technical maneuvering, and collaborating, the new ohsoorganized.com launched at the beginning of the year. Below you can view the welcome-to-the-new-site video. It took a combined effort to get the website to this stage. I’m so happy with the look, feel, and content. But more importantly, it is getting the results I hoped for. People are engaging, taking action, and feeling inspired. Within 24 hours of the launch, a new client hired me because of how the site made her feel- welcomed and understood. After watching one of my videos and reading a few of my posts, another new client was inspired to take action. She organized a corner of a room that had been bothering her for a long time. Feedback has been positive from colleagues, clients, family, friends, and strangers. The theothersideoforganized.com blog community quickly found their new home at ohsoorganized.com/blog. The group continues to thrive as they generously share and engage in our wonderful conversations about organizing, life balance, mindfulness, letting go, motivation, change, and more. I am grateful for what was, what is, and what will be.

What has helped you navigate change? What change is currently engaging your time? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment and join the conversation!

Have you noticed how many of our conversations these days are centered on change? My clients talk about making organizational changes in their lives to feel less stressed, cluttered, and overwhelmed. Friends and family talk about making personal and professional changes to discover new places, learn new things, or embrace a significant life transition. Even in yoga class, teachers and students have change-like thoughts on their minds.

Change is one of the topics I love writing and conversing about most. What I also have noticed is that while we might want change to happen, we are often less clear about how to begin. Also, we might wish to change, but we aren’t necessarily ready or willing to do what’s needed for that change to occur. So with these thoughts in mind, I propose three ideas to help you while you’re navigating that unclear phase. They revolve around the word wander.

3 New Ideas to Inspire Change

“Wander” mug

This time of year with colder, winter days, I’m a huge hot tea drinker. Even as I write this post, I’m in good company with my big cup of tea. There are several mugs that I prefer.  One of my favorites has the word “Wander” on the front. As I sip my tea, I’m reminded that while plans and direction are an essential part of my life, I also need time to wander and explore. While the opportunity for discovery is available at any moment, it’s primarily in these open, white-space times that I can be relaxed enough to be mindful of and notice what I might otherwise miss. So if you are not sure what change you want to make, give yourself some wander time and see what transpires from there.

“Not all who wander are lost.”

On one of my suitcases, I have a luggage tag with this phrase. When I travel, I like to know the details and timing for things. At least, I prefer to know the basics like the dates of travel, flight times, ground transportation arrangements, sleeping accommodations, and the basic structure for the time away. However, I don’t like to over plan. Trips can vary in nature if they are for business or leisure. And even though those types of travel have a different feel to them, I like to keep the “wander” concept in mind. Particularly when I travel, my antenna is sharper than usual. Being out of my typical environment, I’m more apt to notice new patterns, connect ideas, and open my thoughts to other possibilities. Consider how this phrase of “Not all who wander are lost,” can encourage you to infuse the unknown and exploration into your days at home or while traveling. Change ideas and clarity can be inspired from the most unexpected places.

“Lost, but making good time.”

One of the things my husband and I like to joke about is the phrase, “Lost, but making good time.” It comes up in many ways. For example, when we are driving somewhere new and get lost (yes, that still happens even when using Google maps,) one of us will say, “Lost, but making good time.” Instead of feeling irritated that we’re lost, saying these words makes us laugh. It takes away the stress and angst. When we first moved to the Hudson Valley, we frequently drove around to wander the area. We’d try getting lost on purpose. Again, one of us would say the phrase. We joyfully leaned into the idea of intentionally being lost. That’s what I offer to you. The change we seek isn’t always visible. We can’t force clarity. If you embrace the “lost” time, at some point, you will find your way to where you want to go. And sometimes we have to take the time to remain lost a little while longer before we can arrive.

What has inspired change for you? Do any of these ideas resonate? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to add a comment and join the conversation!