4 Things to Remember When Differences Bother You – The Stages of Change

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Transcription:

The world is getting smaller and smaller, as we travel around the world, I am living in China right now, and through all of those experiences and meeting other people and being in different places, we come to find that those differences can really bother us. It can be difficult.

Do You Feel This Way About Differences in Nationality, Race, Gender, or Religion?

It’s sad but it’s true that we’d rather just stick to our own and sort of stay in our own environments that we are used to with the people that either are like us either in skin tone or language, or race or color or whatever we believe, religious beliefs, there’s so many things.

Yeah, I won’t even get into it.

There’s so much variety in the world, but we need to learn to celebrate the diversity and learn to accept it; not just be okay with it and tolerate it , but to really grow into it.

[shareable cite=”Abe Stone” text=”Learn to celebrate diversity and accept it; not simply tolerate it. Grow into it! #quote”]Learn to celebrate diversity and accept it; not just be okay with it and tolerate it , but to really grow into it.[/shareable]

What You May Need to Change How You Feel

I want to give insight into four stages that we go through when we’re dealing with change, when we are dealing with those differences and things that we are not used to.

Sometimes, that’s all we need to be able to learn to appreciate diversity or appreciate difference.

Okay, I’m going to tell you a bit of a story about my experience and at the end and I am going to tell you what these four stages are. (Change Model By Kubler Ross)

[shareable cite=”Abe Stone”]Do you know where you are at in the Change Model? It could make the ride smoother.[/shareable]

Maybe if you understand them, you can know where you’re at and you can know what to shoot for and what you’re working towards.

China, A World of Difference is Not Easy

I’ll tell you about my experience in coming to China. When I first came here, it was crazy, there were so many little things, you wouldn’t even think about them normally, because it doesn’t seem like the things that would be such a big deal.

Simple things like being pushed around and shuffled in a crowd of people. Or being stepped on or having your space sort of like crossed, people crossing in front of you when you’re trying to go shopping or not letting you through a doorway, or simply, something as simple as stopping to let the woman through a door, she’s like shocked like, “Why are you doing that?” And you feel like an alien because you tried to let a woman go through the door.

Anyways, those things really bothered me when I first came here and they just sort of, I was aggravated by them. That first year that I was in China, I was very angry; I was actually angry at just being here. It was the idea of not having that respect that I was to used to, not that I needed the respect but the kindness being offered to me and that my society was used to.

Another Perspective on Social Differences

After about a year, I was like “Okay.” I decided to sort of not be so upset about it and I became sort of passive about it and I stopped resisting it, and then at one point I realized, these people are not bad, they’re just different.

I mean, there’s a whole country of them and they’re just very different. And amongst themselves, they know how to work with it; they have a saying in China,

Learn to flow like water.”

Chinese Proverb

When they have confrontations and difficulties there’s something about that, even just watching the traffic, it’s a strange experience, but they have a different way of approaching life and looking at interactions and behaviour between people.

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It’s Natural to Be Angry but You Can Move on to This

Now that was something I had to get used to and I don’t think I’ll ever fully get used to it, but I learned this, I learned to accept it.

Once I was able to accept it, all of the tension was gone, and I’m at the stage where I can grow with it, I can commit to being a part of it if I need to be or at least knowing how to deal with it, how to work with it and not be fighting it.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ 4 Stages of Change

Alright, so here are the four stages (Kubler Ross Model), this is not anything that I came up with; I put the source in the blog post so you can see it.

The four stages are simply this:

1. First of all, there is shock and denial, “I can’t believe this is happening to me, I can’t believe I’m experiencing this, I really don’t want to be experiencing this.” Or, “These people are so different, I don’t like this.” I wouldn’t even get into some of what I consider some of the disgusting habits that I saw around here. But yeah, that first stage is very difficult.
2. Then from there you move into this anger. Ugh! I couldn’t believe it. After I saw it, after I realized what I went through, then I realized it’s a part of a natural process, it’s actually a natural thing. But make sure you don’t get stuck in that anger.
3. Now the next one, which I think was the big aha moment for me and I went through all of this very naturally, nobody had to tell me, but I just accepted it, I just experienced that acceptance that I was fine, I was happy again.
4. The last of the four stages of experiencing change and adjusting to new situations or differences and diversity and people or culture or whatever the case is, is commitment. Just learn to commit to being a part of it, to that acceptance, to that growth to something new in your life and your experiences with other people.

Reference MindTools.com

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All right, now here’s your quote for today,

[shareable cite=”Martin Luther King Jr.” text=”One has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns.”]An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.[/shareable]

All right, now here’s your affirmation. Remember, post it in a couple places where you are going to see it at least twice a day and say it three times, each time:

[shareable cite=”Abe Stone”]I celebrate life’s diversity. #affirmation[/shareable]