An Expert’s Guide to Making Life Changes

Some people fear change. Others embrace it.

Now more than ever, it pays to be a resilient person who can easily cope with life-altering challenges.

Meet Ariane de Bonvoisin, author of The First 30 Days: Your Guide to Making Any Change Easier.

With her help, you can learn to chart a course though any life change, no matter how frightening it may seem. Here are her 9 key tips for mastering change:

1. Change your view of change.
De Bonvoisin’s first principle is that people who successfully navigate change have positive beliefs. Meaning that if you believe changes are terrible and difficult, they inevitably will be.

“Change optimists” are people who believe that change is good, and that something exciting awaits on the far side of the transition.

2. Believe that something positive will always come from change.
Though it may not be immediately obvious, even the hardest, most painful changes will eventually bring a gift to your life, says de Bonvoisin.

Become comfortable with the uncertainty that change brings, and stay open to the positive mystery of what’s right around the corner.

3. Exercise your “change muscle.”
Believe that you’re stronger, smarter and more intuitive than you’ve ever been told, and that you’re more resilient and a much more powerful person than you know. Once you accept this, you’ll be able to sail through any change—even the most difficult.

4. Recognize negative emotions and move past them.
Inside all of us are “change demons,” those negative whispers you hear in your head that can destroy hope and dampen self-esteem. If you harness their power, change demons can be transformed into strong positive emotions. (Read about the change demon of fear.)

5. The faster you accept change, the less pain and hardship you’ll experience.
When you don’t accept change, you get stuck and resist the forward momentum that’s carrying you to the next phase of your life. The sooner you allow life to carry you along, the better you will feel.

6. Express your feelings clearly and positively.
Change makes many people feel out of control. Help yourself by choosing how you communicate the news of your change to others (and to yourself). Are you communicating only the pain and heartbreak? Or are you reminding your listeners (and yourself) about the bright sides of the change?