Change can be scary. Having to step outside our comfort zone and face something new, well, that’s the stuff of nightmares for many of us. When change comes about without warning or preparation, it can leave us feeling vulnerable and disempowered. An unexpected change can rock the foundation of everything we believe we know about our lives, and even ourselves.
Being resistant to change, especially change we can’t control, is often motivated by fear: fear of the unknown, fear of what we are losing or leaving behind, fear that we aren’t up to the task of coping with what’s next. Fear of change is not a weakness; in fact, it’s a part of human evolution. In the ancient world, consistency and predictability were a matter of safety and survival; yet as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “Nothing endures but change.”
Facing an unexpected change head-on means acknowledging our fear, mourning the loss of control and consistency, and stepping into the future with the firm belief that we are resilient enough to handle it.
These quotes about the inevitability and unpredictability of change remind us that we can’t always control the twists and turns that occur in our lives, but we can control how we respond to those changes.
It is never quite safe to think we have done with life. When we imagine we have finished our story fate has a trick of turning the page and showing us yet another chapter.Lucy Maud Montgomery
Once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in.Haruki Murakami
The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.Barbara Kingsolver
Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.Eckhart Tolle
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.James Baldwin
All changes are more or less tinged with melancholy, for what we are leaving behind is part of ourselves.Amelia E. Barr
Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.Joan Didion
Change is inevitable in life. You can either resist change and potentially be swept away by it — or you can cooperate with it, adapt to it, and benefit from it.Jack Canfield
Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for a change.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future.Eric Hoffer
Everything changes and nothing stands still.Heraclitus
There is no sin punished more implacably by nature than the sin of resistance to change. For change is the very essence of living matter. To resist change is to sin against life itself.Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Nothing is, they say; all becomes; the world is but a current of ephemeral appearances; there is nothing stable in it, and nothing permanent except change itself.André Chevrillon
You’re always you, and that don’t change, and you’re always changing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.Neil Gaiman
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.Alan Watts
Featured image credit: gguy44/ iStock
