The only thing consistent in life is change

Nothing lasts forever. That’s something we’ve heard in movies, or on a random show on Netflix.

But is that really true?

Yes, life is temporary. When we’re alive, we enjoy friendships, family and love. We also endure the harshness of life, such as suffering from an unwanted illness, going through a heartbreak and having to go through countless failures.

Both the good and the bad side of life come and go. But there’s one thing in life that’s always constant - change. And it’s really important that we embrace it.

Why we should embrace change?

When we’re young, we feel invincible. We manage hangovers better, we don’t need much sleep and we can recover from minor bumps much quicker.

The thing is, when we’re young, we take all of this for granted.

But as we get older, we find that we don’t have the same vigour and energy that we once had. Some choose to ignore this growing limitation and end up feeling fatigue and burnt out. Whereas, others accept this limitation and adapt.

Change is inevitable.

We’re going to get older and suffer from various ailments. We’re going to lose touch with people we were once close with during our school years. We’re going to lose a loved one in our lifetime, whether that’s a parent, a friend or a partner.

Embracing change makes it easier to deal with uncertainty

I’ve worked as a copywriter for over 10 years. With the advent of AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, I quickly realised that being a copywriter could no longer a viable career. 

While I'm still lucky to be a copywriter. I needed a backup. After all, I seen companies share social media posts using poorly written AI-text (AI text is so easy to spot).

In my spare time, I started learning how to code and look at data analytics as an alternative career path. I'm still upskilling right now.

We have to remember though, this isn’t the first technology to impact the job market.

When robotics were first introduced on the factory floor to scale up production, millions of people were left out of work.

So from a career perspective, when we want job security, nothing is truly permanent.

How to take change in your stride

While we like the good type of change, like a new job with a better salary or a new home, it’s the bad type of change that we (including myself) that we want to avoid.

The best way to embrace this bad type change is to take a page from the Stoics. Here’s a quote by Marcus Aurelius that often gets echoed by another prominent stoic writer - Ryan Holiday.

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil.. The wrongdoer[s] has a nature related to my own, so none of them can’t hurt me”

The above quote by Marcus Aurelius refers to an exercise called Negative Visualisation. It involves imagining the worst case scenario.

By envisioning the worst, you end up less disappointed by the unwanted scenario because you already played it out in your head. You’ve accepted it before it has happened. 

The other exercise is to adopt the beginner’s mindset, which I learned from a book by TC Suzuki: Zen Mind, The Beginner’s Mind. Suzuki shares that with a beginner’s mind, you’re in a strong position to approach everything from a fresh perspective. This allows you to see change not as a threat, but as an opportunity for growth.

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few."

Change is inevitable

If we refuse to change with times, then we won’t grow. We'll be left behind.

As we’ve become accustomed to the digital age, parts of the elderly population are struggling to use technology. What makes it even worse for the older generation is that pretty much every industry is delivering their service through a digital medium such as an app or chatbot. Online banking is one example of this.

This is why we need to adapt. When we get older, we’ll struggle, just like our ageing population. It’s uncomfortable for me to write this but it’s true.