How to Survive Change You Didn't Ask For: Bounce Back, Find Calm in Chaos and Reinvent Yourself (Change for the Better, Uncertainty of Life)

by M.J. Ryan

Overview

Life Changing Advice for Thriving in a Shifting World

"…teaches us how we can get through the pain more quickly and extract greater meaning from the nonnegotiable events of life." —Ellyn Spragins, author of What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self

Overwhelmed by life’s challenges? Exhausted by crisis after crisis in the world? Bestselling author M.J. Ryan’s How to Survive Change You Didn't Ask For is filled with advice and timely, relevant tips to help you cope, change your mindset, and ultimately thrive.

Transform your mindset and find success. In today's tumultuous times, it's almost certain that you're grappling with unexpected changes—perhaps a life changing crisis like job loss or the shattering of a long-held dream. You might be surviving change at work or seeking a new place to call home. Esteemed bestselling author, renowned thought leader, and change expert M.J. Ryan returns with her powerful insights and strategies to guide you through the turbulence of change, regardless of its nature.

Equip yourself with the tools to manage change. Change is seldom easy, especially when it arrives uninvited. However, within every moment of upheaval lies an opportunity for personal growth and a change for the better. Within the pages of her book, Ryan offers a comprehensive roadmap for preserving your mental acuity and enhancing your response to life's unpredictable shifts, one step at a time. With her expert guidance, your adaptability will flourish, bolstering your confidence and enabling you to not only survive but flourish in the uncertainty of life.

Inside learn how to:

• Accept change
• Expand your options
• Strengthen your adaptability
• Take decisive action

If you liked books about resilience such as Master of Change, Do Hard Things, or Curtis Bateman’s Change, you’ll love How to Survive Change You Didn’t Ask For.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684814824
Publisher:	Mango Media
Publication date:	03/12/2024
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Known internationally as an expert on change, M.J. Ryan works as an executive coach to senior executives and entrepreneurs around the world, helping them accelerate business success and personal fulfillment. She combines a practical approach gained as the CEO of a book publishing company with methodologies from neuroscience, positive psychology, and asset-focused learning to help clients and readers more easily meet their goals. 

Her client list includes Royal Dutch Shell, Microsoft, Time, the U.S. military, and Aon Hewitt. She's a partner with the Levo League career network and the lead venture coach at SheEO, an organization offering a new funding and support model for female entrepreneurs. She's the founder of Conari Press, creator of the New York Times bestselling Random Acts of Kindness series, and author of many books, including Habit Changers: 81 Game-Changing Mantras to Mindfully Realize Your Goals. 

Read an Excerpt

As we face today’s realities and try to adapt, it’s not surprising that we may need support. Who among us took a class on how to cope with change? In the past, changes happened more slowly, and our need to adapt was much, much less. Here’s just one example of the acceleration of change. Starting at AD 1, it took 1,500 years for the amount of information in the world to double. It’s now doubling at the rate of once every two years. No wonder we’re scrambling to keep up!

What’s puzzling about this absence of training in AdaptAbility is that companies all know that their employees’ capacity to change is one of the key factors in business success. According to the Strategic Management Research Center, for instance, the failure rate of mergers and acquisitions is as much as 60 to 70 percent. Why? Not because it’s not a good idea to bring two organizations together to create efficiencies and synergies, but because the people in them fail to adapt to the changed circumstances. I was just speaking yesterday to a woman in a huge oil company who had been part of an effort to create a standardized process for gathering information across departments. She’d left to work on another project and discovered that, two years and millions of dollars later, the effort had failed. Why? Because employees kept using the old system they knew, rather than learn the new one.

Examples of the lack of ability to change don’t have to be that expensive or dramatic. They happen every single day right where you live and work. I would say at least half of the folks I coach on a weekly basis are looking for help adapting to new positions or circumstances where they must drive results in a different way than they have before. The behaviors that have gotten them where they are today are simply not working. And these are all folks who have jobs—those without work need even more support in learning new skills and attitudes.

Resisting change wears down our bodies, taxes our minds, and deflates our spirits. We keep doing the things that have always worked before with depressingly diminishing results. We expend precious energy looking around for someone to blame—ourselves, another person, or the world. We worry obsessively. We get stuck in the past, lost in bitterness or anger. Or we fall into denial—everything’s fine, I don’t have to do anything different. Or magical thinking—something or someone will come along to rescue me from having to change. We don’t want to leave the cozy comfort of the known and familiar for the scary wilderness of that which we’ve never experienced. And so we rail against it and stay stuck.

When the environment changes and we must therefore, too, it’s appropriate to complain—to take, in the words of Dr. Pamela Peeke, the BMW (Bitch, Moan, and Whine) out for a little spin. But soon it’s time to put it back in the driveway and get down to business. And that means developing AdaptAbility.

In a very real way, what is being asked of us now is no more or less than to become consciously aligned with what life has always required on this planet. In 1956, the father of stress research, Hans Selye, wrote in his seminal work, The Stress of Life, “Life is largely a process of adaptation to the circumstances in which we exist. A perennial give and take has been going on between living matter and its inanimate surroundings, between one living being and another, ever since the dawn of life in the prehistoric oceans. The secret of health and happiness lies in successful adjustment to the ever-changing conditions on this globe; the penalties for failure in this great process of adaptation are disease and unhappiness.”

My goal is to offer you a way to relate to the change you’re facing with the least wear and tear and the greatest potential not merely to survive, but to thrive during the greatest period of transformation humans have ever experienced. We are all being called on to stretch mentally, emotionally, and spiritually into the future. It’s my hope that this book offers you both comfort and practical support as you take on this challenge, and may what you learn here help you become a Change Master.

Table of Contents

I. Welcome to “Permanent White Water”

II. Seven Truths About Change

• Change Truth #1: Change Is the One Thing You Can Count On
• Change Truth #2: It’s Not Personal
• Change Truth #3: Your Thinking Is Not Always Your Friend
• Change Truth #4: Change Isn’t the Enemy, Fear Is
• Change Truth #5: There’s a Predictable Emotional Cycle to Change
• Change Truth #6: You’re More Resilient Than You May Think
• Change Truth #7: Your Future Is Built on a Bedrock That Is Unchanging

III. The Actions of a Change Master

• Step 1: Accept the Change
• Gather the Facts Like a Newspaper Reporter
• What Other Information Do You Need?
• The Truth Will Set You Free (Or at Least into Motion)
• If You Can See It, It’s Yours to Deal With
• How Could This Be Good Luck?
• “Worry Well”
• What Core Issue Does This Trigger?
• Relate to Your Fear
• Send Out an SOS
• Recognize If You’re Milling
• It’s Good to Bitch and Moan but Not Forever
• Get the 3Cs in Place
• Choose Carefully Where You Put Your Attention
• Avoid Shame by Remembering That Difficulties Can Happen to Anyone
• Don’t Waste Precious Time or Energy on Blame
• Regret Well
• Experience the Comfort of Forgiveness
• Do the Three Blessings
• Cultivate Your Witness Self
• Stay Open to Miracles
• Find the Gift in the Change
Step 2: Expand Your Options
• What Helps You Expand Your Thinking?
• How Does Your Self-Concept Need to Change?
• Seek Information Outside Your Box
• Hedge Your Bets
• Kill Your Little Darlings
• Tap Into Your Inner Resources
• What Other Resources Are Available?
• Be Like the Native Americans
• Create the Necessary Reserves
• Don’t Go into the Wilderness Without Your Compass
• What Are Your Inner Talents?
• Reexamine Your Priorities
• Envision Your Next Chapter
• Who Do You Need by Your Side?
• Watch the Road, Not the Potholes
• Step 3: Take Action
• Create a Story of Possibility
• Make Deposits into Your Hope Account
• Hope Is Not a Plan
• Get the Balls in the Air
• Think Through the Implications
• Just Do One Thing
• Ready, Fire, Aim
• Evaluate Progress
• If You’re Not Stretching, You’re Probably Missing Something
• Do What’s Needed
• Build Your Brand
• Get More Connected
• Create a Change Masters Circle
• Use an Inspiring Mantra to Keep Up Your Spirits
• Focus on the Upside of Scaling Back
• Allow Your Circumstances to Open Your Heart
• Step 4: Strengthen Adaptability
• Become a Lifelong Learner
• Reflect on Your Learnings

IV. Twenty Quick Tips for Surviving Change You Didn’t Ask For

V. Resources for More Support

For Personal Support from Me
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

If you’re struggling and think that one more book can’t possibly make a difference, think again. M.J. Ryan has the rare gift of breaking things down into clear pieces that can be tackled.”
—Laura Berman Fortgang, author of Now What?: 90 Days to a New Life Direction

“You are always more resilient than you think. In her motivational and optimistic book, M.J. Ryan shows you how to face the unexpected and use what you’ve learned to be happier in life, in love, and at work.”
—Nell Merlino, leader of Make Mine a Million $ Business and author of Stepping Out of Line

“The change you didn’t ask for has a way of smacking you between the eyes. M.J. Ryan’s book teaches us how we can get through the pain more quickly and extract greater meaning from the nonnegotiable events of life.”
—Ellyn Spragins, author of What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self

“How to Survive Change You Didn’t Ask For is not only M.J. Ryan’s best book, but the most accessible and practical book yet on the subject of change to date. It contains a compendium of best practices from cross-sector disciplines and research regarding transition and change in our lives. Nowhere will you find a more inspirational, realistic, comforting and accessible book that reduces fear and reopens possibility, curiosity, and creative solutions unimagined during the most challenging of times!”
—Angeles Arrien, PhD, cultural anthropologist and author of The Second Half of Life and Living in Gratitude

“What if someone could whisper in your ear the secret to feeling more peaceful, more confident, more emotionally secure, more aligned with your values, more capable of taking risks, and more comfortable in your skin? Wouldn’t that be amazing?! This book is that whisper! Mary Jane Ryan's How to Survive Change You Didn't Ask For will get you through ANYTHING. You’ll learn how to set new boundaries, take bold leaps, trust your gut, create your own rules, and so much more.”
—Sherry Richert Belul, author of Say It Now and founder of Simply Celebrate

“Insightful, honest and refreshingly pragmatic. M.J. Ryan skillfully cuts through the noise of the guru help category and provides a hugely practical way to help yourself. This is the right book for right now.”
—Jonathan Pease, author of Winning the Room

“When life changes are planned and thought out, we are filled with optimism and excitement for what the future may bring. However, when that change is unexpected or imposed, we are often wrought with anxiety and worry. M.J. Ryan’s tools, as set out in her How to Survive Change You Didn't Ask For provides a thoughtful and simple resource to help each of us navigate life’s unexpected changes.”
—Julie and David Bulitt, authors of Secrets of Strong Couples and cohosts of Conversations for Couples - The Podcast

“M.J. Ryan’s new book, How to Survive Change You Didn't Ask For, is the manual none of us received when we came down the chute. It’s the playbook, the bible, the encyclopedia we need now. In it, she offers the recipe to help us develop the skillset we need in a world that is morphing and changing faster than ever before. With the tools she offers, we can do more than hang on for dear life. We can thrive!”
—Nita Sweeney, mindfulness coach and bestselling author of Depression Hates a Moving Target

From the Publisher