My integrated science teacher was one of my favourite teachers at SJC, I’m not big on ‘sucking up’ to authority and children who were teacher’s pets irked me, but this lady was inspiring, so I asked her to sign my yearbook, I’m so glad I did.

She wrote several meaningful things but ”Growth Demands Change” was in CAPS and, while I didn’t fully understand it then, in the years to come life fully explained. It was a line I never forgot.

I mean let’s face it, change is inevitable in life and it can be scary and stressful af.

We may resist change because we fear the unknown, we feel comfortable with the status quo, or we worry about losing control.

However, to this day, whenever I find I’m having difficulty adjusting to change, I remind myself that growth demands it. Positive change is always an opportunity to grow and when we are open to change and embracing challenges, we can expand our horizons, discover new possibilities, and achieve our goals.

That being said, how can we be more open to change and embrace challenges?

Here are three ways millennials can adopt a positive mindset and take fascinating steps towards overcoming our fears:

1. Recognise the Benefits of Change and Challenges.

Change and challenges can bring many benefits to our lives, such as:

Enhancing our skills and abilities

When we face change and challenges, we have to learn new things. Every time we learn and adapt to different situations and solve problems we develop our skills and abilities. Challenges activate our such as creativity, communication, and critical thinking skills and delays and disappointments build our resilience. Those are invaluable as we move forward in this fascinating life.

Boosting our confidence and self-esteem.

Confidence is my favourite side effect that comes from facing challenges. When we overcome change and challenges, we can feel proud of ourselves and our achievements. This boosts our confidence and self-esteem, making us more confident in our abilities and more willing to take on new challenges.

Opening up new opportunities

When we embrace change and challenges, we can discover new opportunities that we may not have noticed before. For example, we may find a new career path, a new hobby, a new friend, or a new perspective.

This platform originated with a challenge: I was scared and frustrated at the thought of getting older and I used that challenge to create something to get excited … right now, I love my thirties but I’m giddy about stepping into the most fascinating decade of my life.

Therefore, instead of focusing on the negative aspects of change and challenges, we should try to recognize the positive outcomes that they can bring to our lives.

2. Adopt a growth mindset

A growth mindset is a belief that our abilities and talents can be improved through effort, learning, and feedback. People with a growth mindset see change and challenges as opportunities to learn and grow. They are not afraid of failure, and even if they are, they prefer to see it as a part of the learning process. They are also open to feedback and seek out ways to improve themselves.

A growth mindset can help us be more open to change and embrace challenges because it helps us:

Overcome our limiting beliefs

We may have limiting beliefs about ourselves or our abilities that hold us back from trying new things or taking on challenges. For example, we may think that we are not smart enough, not good enough, or not talented enough.

However, a growth mindset can help us overcome these beliefs by reminding us that we can always improve ourselves with effort and learning. Learning is one of the ways we show-up for ourselves and express self-love, I talked about that in this blog post earlier.

Embrace uncertainty

We may feel anxious or stressed about change because we don’t know what will happen or how things will turn out.

However, a growth mindset can help us embrace uncertainty by encouraging us to see it as an opportunity to explore, experiment and experience positive change.

Instead of worrying about the outcome, we can focus on the process and enjoy the journey.

Seek out challenges

39 years on this earth has taught me a few unshakable truths. One is that the thing we must do and avoid doing, will follow us around like a shadow of doom until we face it, focus and finish it.

We may avoid challenges because we fear failure or rejection. However, a growth mindset can help us seek out challenges by motivating us to challenge ourselves and stretch our abilities. Instead of seeing challenges as threats, we can see them as opportunities to learn and grow.

Therefore, instead of having a fixed mindset that believes that our abilities are fixed and cannot be changed, we should adopt a growth mindset that believes that our abilities can always be developed and improved.

3. Practice Gratitude

Gratitude is a feeling of appreciation for what we have in our lives and it is the emotion that is closest to abundance and expansion. Practising gratitude can help us be more open to change and embrace challenges because it helps us:

Shift our focus from the negative to the positive

Focus on the negative aspects of change and challenges can be a cop-out. Sometimes we walk around with chips on our shoulders, feeling like we are the victim counting all the things that go wrong, our difficulties, the risks that might come, or the losses we have already experienced.

We have all been there, however, gratitude can help us shift our focus from the negative to the positive by helping us appreciate what we have in our lives, such as our strengths, our resources, our support system, or our achievements.

Reduce our stress and anxiety.

We may feel stressed or anxious about change because we worry about the future or regret the past. Switching to gratitude can help us reduce our stress and anxiety by helping us live in the present moment and enjoy what we have right now.

Increase our happiness and well-being

We may feel unhappy or dissatisfied with our lives because we compare ourselves to others or crave more than what we have. Social media and your overachiever friends would have you in a bind, However, practising gratitude can help us increase our happiness and well-being by helping us appreciate what we have in our lives and how far we have come even while we honour others for where they are in life.

Therefore, instead of taking things for granted or complaining about what we don’t have, we should practice gratitude by expressing thanks for what we have in our lives.

Sis, change and challenges are inevitable in life, but they don’t have to be scary or stressful. By recognizing the benefits of change and challenges, adopting a growth mindset, and practising gratitude, we can be more open to change embrace challenges and keep creating a fascinating life

I hope you enjoyed this post, leave a comment letting me know where you are reading this from and what tips you are using on your journey to 40 to embrace change.

If you would like to get more tips and insights about the joys of turning 40, follow me on this blog Spotify and YouTube.

Thank you for reading and keep doing your most.