One of the most stressful and chaotic activities – in North America, anyway – is moving. Not to have one of those pity parties about so-called “first world problems, “ but I’m in that mode right now where things are surrounded by boxes and my little world is askew.
However you feel now, you won’t always feel this way.
It’s easy think things will always be like this. Times of transition are difficult, and our human brains tend to believe that the way we feel today is the way we will always feel. There’s a term for this: Affective forecasting, which predicts how we will feel in the future.
We all run into this issue. A friend of mine feels trapped in her current situation, but can’t seem to understand that change is inevitable. No matter what, her current situation will change, in one way or another.
As for me, I got momentarily stuck believing that the chaos generated by my current move would be indefinite. Of course, that’s nonsense, unless I randomly decide to live the rest of my life pulling items from boxes, rather than putting them away somewhere.
Whether we like it or not, change happens. And that also applies to the way we feel about our life circumstances. If you feel discouraged about something today, or can’t understand how your situation will ever change, that feeling likely won’t last until some date way out in the future. Future events do have an effect on our emotions, but not necessarily in the way we believe they will.
Likewise, today’s feeling of being overwhelmed, surrounded by packing boxes and chaos also won’t be the way I feel in the future – hopefully! Remember: You won’t always feel this way.
It helps to remember this when we feel that life’s events are spinning around us, and that the chaos will never end. Rest assured, it will. Change is inevitable, and something else will replace it.
