Unexpected Change of Circumstances

It is funny how the circumstances we may find ourselves in can either give us a jumpstart, or stop us in our tracks. We tend to look at a change in our circumstances as a negative. Something that is throwing off our routine; that takes away the structure in our lives — in other words, something that makes our lives harder than it needs to be, as it takes away the organization we have imposed on our lives. It stops the plans we have made in their tracks, and suddenly we need to adapt to a place — and energy— that we are not that familiar with. 

This seems quite obvious with the big events in life — like relationships (whether they start or end; they do change the circumstances), moving house (for whatever the reason), losing or finding a job… All of those things change our circumstances to such extend that we are forced to adapt.

While there are also much smaller things we can find on our path, that change our circumstances in such a way that they become ‘life altering events’. With the recent pandemic as another major circumstance that can affect our lives and cause us to change direction on our individual life paths, is our health. Or more precisely, our perception of our health and wellbeing.

Suddenly it seems like we have become much more aware of how fragile our health and wellbeing are — or can be. Where only a couple of years ago we may have thought that being healthy was our “normal” state of being, now it is almost like we have to take overate action to maintain that level of wellbeing that we are comfortable with.

Just living a healthy life — with healthy food, enough sleep, and plenty of exercise — no longer seems to get us the same results it always did…

It amounts to an unexpected change in circumstances that demands us to look at the way we live our lives differently.

On one hand we may find that the stress we have always experienced as a “normal” part of life can have a greater impact on our sense of wellbeing than it ever did before. But then again, this greater awareness of our (perceived) physical fragility may also allow for physical anomalies to come to the surface unexpectedly.

It can be as simple as twisting an ankle because we stepped on a loose tile on the sidewalk, or as complex as an illness we find ourselves dealing with out of the blue.

These type of unexpected circumstances ask for a drastic reduction of whatever stress we are experiencing in our lives. On top of that it becomes extremely important to prioritize — to determine what is most important to us as we are living our lives, rather than to continuously adapt to (what we perhaps are thinking) other people around us are expecting of us.

And when we take back our ability to make our ow decisions, walk our own path, and live our own lives in a way that makes us happy — we may well find that our sense of wellbeing grows, as well as the perception that we are stronger — healthier — than we think we are.