Hi guys! welcome to Episode 618 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast. I’m Heidi, and I want you to know that I’m proud of you for working on being the best you can be. I know you are because you show up here to the Wildly Successful lifestyle podcast for 10 min of us all figuring out how to have the best life we can…so much of that comes from how we control our thoughts, how we control our mind. Because we have the power to control it, but a lot of us just let it control us from the minute we get up to the minute we go to bed we could be at the whim of whatever thought our mind throws our way, but it doesn’t have to be like that. We have the power to control our whole life by simply controlling the thoughts we have. Because those thoughts can make us so miserable even when life is good or they can make us feel joy even when life is hard. I had an experience this last week that drove that point home for me.
Picture this: It’s Christmas Eve. I’m sitting in church, surrounded by my beautiful family, gorgeous lights everywhere, happy excited people all around, beautiful music playing—and out of nowhere, this wave of sadness washes over me.
Which makes zero sense, right?
This should be one of the coziest, most joyful nights of the year. Yet there I was, feeling unexpectedly heavy.
So of course, I started analyzing it—because that’s what I do. And I realized quickly why I was feeling that way. The opening song was one I’d never heard before. The pastor up front was new. The two founding pastors I’d loved for years had both retired. Some of my favorite voices in the choir weren’t there anymore.
In that moment, I was focusing on and grieving all the little changes at once. My brain was laser-focused on everything that was different from “how it used to be.”
I was able to notice this because I know my feelings come from my thoughts even if I’m not super conscious of what those thoughts are, they may be kind of in the background, and I’m not really conscious of them: But, I caught myself. I noticed where my attention was going. And instead of letting that sadness spiral, I made a deliberate choice.
Every time my mind drifted to “this isn’t the same,” I gently pulled it back to one thing I could appreciate right then and there—the warmth of my husband’s hand in mine, the way the candlelight flickered on people’s faces, the fresh perspective in that new pastor’s message. I took little notes on what he was saying. I soaked in the moment with my family.
And you know what? The sadness lifted. Not because I suddenly loved all the changes—I didn’t. Things were genuinely different, and part of me still missed the old version. But I stopped pouring energy into resisting what was the current reality, and I started pouring it into appreciating what was right in front of me.
That small shift changed the entire night.
I’ve been thinking about that moment a lot over the past few days, and I’m actually glad it happened. Because it reminded me of a tension we all live with every single day.
We are wired—deep in our biology—to crave the familiar. Familiar feels safe. Familiar meant survival for our ancestors. A new sound in the bushes? Danger. A new food? Could be poison. A new face? Possible threat.
So evolution rewarded the people who stuck with what they knew, who approached the unknown with caution. That wiring kept us alive, and it’s still in us today. That’s why we love our usual coffee order, our favorite playlist, the same vacation spot year after year. Familiar equals comfort. Familiar equals happy.
But here’s the empowering truth: we’re no longer cave dwellers dodging predators. The unknown rarely kills us anymore. And yet that old wiring still fires, making us resist perfectly good change—new jobs, new relationships, new routines, empty nests, aging parents, even something as simple as a church service that looks a little different.
Meanwhile, the only constant in life is… change. Everything changes. Bodies, seasons, technology, relationships, opportunities. If we spend our energy clinging to “how it used to be,” we create our own suffering. We miss the beauty that’s unfolding right now.
So how do we handle this built-in conflict without losing ourselves?
First of all we have to notice, like I did, the resistance. That’s step one. The moment you feel that tightness, that nostalgia, that irritation at something new—if you can notice it and just say to yourself oh, I’m wanting that to be the way it used to be because it’s familiar” Just noticing it takes away half its power.
And then give yourself permission to grieve what’s gone. Change a lot of times involves real loss. It’s okay to miss the old pastors, the old body, the old dynamic with a friend. Feel it. Acknowledge it. But don’t camp out there.
And then finally, deliberately change your focus to what’s good right now. Not fake positivity—just honest appreciation. Ask yourself: What’s one thing I can enjoy in this new version? What opportunity does this change open up that the old way didn’t?
I’ve used this over and over. When our friends moved from our city one by one, I reminded myself that we would have fun, new places to visit. When a hurricane took out our favorite little quaint hotel, we just knew we would have fun finding our next maybe even better little spot.
Change doesn’t have to erase what came before. It just asks us to make room for what’s next.
And here’s the thing: when we stop fighting change and start dancing with it, life gets richer. We grow. We discover new music, new passions, new versions of ourselves we might actually like better.
My challenge to you today is to pick one change in your life big or small that you’ve been resisting or quietly resenting, maybe a new boss, all the kids have left for college, maybe a shift in your health or even something as little as a your favorite product got discontinued, and acknowledge what you miss about that old routine then come up with three things you can appreciate about your new reality, no forcing it, just three honest ones. If you pick this new habit up, you’ll notice life becomes easier because you are learning how to adapt to any change that comes up, it doesn’t mean you have to love it, it just means you find something you do love about your new reality and spend time focusing on that instead. Change is inevitable. But it doesn’t have to be so hard. It’s the resisting of the change that creates that optional suffering, if you really think about. It’s a little mindset shift with big rewards.
I’ll be doing it with you. Share this with 3 people who may have had some big changes in their life recently. I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days!
