How to Thrive (and not just survive) in an Unpredictable World.

Learning how to adapt to unexpected situations is key to living a life where you survive and thrive. 

The one thing that will never change in life is that it will always be unpredictable. Life will always shift and change, as much as we crave consistency, we can’t control what happens to us in life, but we can choose how we respond to life’s curveballs. 

I think we can all agree that this year has held moment after moment of change for many of us. Growth can come from a crisis, a result of choice, or even just chance. 

The best way to deal with change and the unpredictability of life is to accept that we cannot control everything. The better we get at adapting and making changes in our life the easier it will be for us to shift our mindsets and use our moments of difference to our advantage. We all have it inside ourselves to make our situations better based on our reactions. 

You might ask, how do we do this? While nothing will be perfect, and we will all have to endure hardships, I have created a list of ways that you can best prepare yourself for the unexpected moments in your life.

1. Switch your Mindset 

Most of us crave predictability. We thrive when we know how a situation will pan out. When something unexpected happens, we can crumble because we don’t know how to handle situations we weren’t expecting. We can all think back to when we had a plan put into place, whether it was a major plan like who you wanted to marry or a somewhat smaller decision of where you wanted to eat dinner. If these plans go awry, like a divorce or our restaurant is closed, it can take us a long time to shift our mindset into moving forward in our lives. We need to conclude that planning is good, but that if something doesn’t happen the way we want, we can move forward and not get stuck in our past. There is no way to get around the fact that change is scary. Our subconscious mind thrives in living in the ‘known,’ which can sometimes actually hold us back from creating positive change in the unknown. We need to shift our mindsets to find calmness and peace in figuring out life through unexpected circumstances. Our power of choosing how we will react in a situation can help set us up for positive change in those moments.  

2. Let Go of Control

There is no denying that most of society looks for patterns in life. We can see it through the structures that we set. Go to college, get your degree, find your soulmate, get married, have kids, etc. The damaging effect in focusing on controlling our lives is that life is bound to go different from what you expected. Following a strict sense of control in your life is setting yourself up for failure. When life throws a wrench in your plan (which is inevitable at some point, no matter how big or small), you will not be prepared to face it. We aren’t saying that you can’t follow a path you envision; we’re saying to let go of the sense that your life value and your happiness is tied to that plan going exactly how you plan it. If this year has taught us anything, we need to make room for things to adapt and change. So how can we let go of our control? This isn’t going to be an overnight change, and I’ll link a great article here, talking more in-depth about letting go of control, but simply put, it takes practice. Start with small things that you can work through, and when the big things happen, it won’t seem as hard to tackle. 

3. Find Deep Meaning in Your Life.

When we believe that we are in full control of our lives, we put all our happiness and meaning into achieving our success. We put our identity into what we can do and how well we perform. This is also dangerous because we will fail at some point- there is no way to escape failure in this life, and how will we overcome it if we no longer find deep meaning within ourselves? One way I’ve found to ground myself through life’s unpredictability is to find deeper meaning in my life. That even when life doesn’t go exactly how we expect it to, we can lean into the promise of a larger picture. We can have faith that there is something bigger out there that we are living for. 

Knowing that we can shift our mindset, help us let go of the stress that comes with control, and find our deeper meaning for our life will help guide us through the more challenging seasons of our lives. 

If you like to find out more information about how to put these practices into your life, schedule a session today