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What's up friends, Nick DiStefano chasing the awesome life podcast. We're back to take on the second part of embracing the suck change specifically today. Let's talk about how we can move through these five stages. So if you remember in the last episode part one of this this series on embracing the suck of change and
We mentioned the five stages of the emotional cycle of change. I'll just do a quick recap and then we'll talk about how we can move through them and some ways that I have learned to move through them myself and how I have gotten better at embracing change and embracing the suck of it because it's not fun. All right. So there's five stages. They're uninformed optimism. That's this exciting stage where, you know, you imagine that the
the good things that will come out of this change. Maybe it's, you know, you're thinking about making a change to your diet. So you're looking at these are the good things that could come out of it. But you also haven't technically experienced any of the costs that come with actually making the change. So it's like, oh, this is great. Like, we're good to go.
A lot of times you're going to kind of brainstorm and think about things that we can do better in this phase. Then quickly after that, which usually it isn't long, is this stage of informed pessimism. You start to get the information and you realize this isn't very easy, this is difficult, and it's
It becomes a reality. And then you're like, oh, cool. It's going to get better, but actually it gets worse first. And it moves into this stage called the valley of despair. And this is the stage where it just feels like everything is going wrong, like you can't do anything right. If you've ever experienced change, you've been in this state at some point during it. We'll talk about how we can get out of it here in a minute.
Then we move into informed optimism. We start making some progress. And then our last stage of it is success and fulfillment. So I'm going to talk through two different examples in this podcast. I'm not going to spend tons of time here, but I want to make sure that we give you a couple different ideas and ways that you can move through these stages faster and more efficiently and
in the most awesome way possible, really, at the end of the day, is what we're trying to do. So let's start with informed pessimism and the valley of despair. So when Megan and I found out about three and a half years ago now, I remember it like it was yesterday, sitting in a conference room, I remember her crying when someone said, your son has autism. And I remember it and thought to myself,
well, damn, but we're going to be okay. And I am, we are both, when we look at who we are as individuals, we are optimistic and positive people. It comes natural for us. In fact, when you look at our CliftonStrengths, which I'll cover CliftonStrengths specifically, I just did a whole, which is part of the reason why I'm late in putting these episodes out. I just spent the last week or so doing a whole training on coaching related to CliftonStrengths. But in our CliftonStrengths,
Positivity is in our top five. So I was in this uninformed optimism stage of like, this is gonna be good. Like we're gonna be okay. Like it's not a big deal. I mean, it was still sad and shocking and seeing Megan cry wasn't fun.
But I was in this uninformed optimism, like it's not that bad. And then I realized like, wow, there's a lot that we have to do here. And there's, you know, a lot of challenges that lie ahead for us. We're autism parents now, whatever that means, you know, and it was this, you know, realization of all of these things that we were going to be doing. We're learning about things like ABA therapy, applied behavioral analysis, and what does that look like and the cost of it.
And what's his future going to look like? And there were so many things that ran through our head and we talked about it a lot. And it was, you know, something that we struggled with. And, you know, the other example I'm going to use in this podcast is, you know,
running a half marathon or for me right now trying to run a marathon and making that change of becoming a runner, becoming someone who can run long distance. And usually in this stage of informed pessimism, what happens is you start to kind of look for the ways to get out of the change.
So you start rationalizing with your stuff and you start looking for things to say, you know what, maybe I shouldn't be running this many miles. It's bad for my knee.
Maybe I shouldn't because fill in the blank. You have reasons that you start to look at why I shouldn't do something. We can't and we don't want to abandon our son, but we need to go through the change of accepting that he has autism.
So that was part of our struggle was this informed pessimism of how do we tell people? What do we do about it? And I remember for the longest time, like we didn't even want to say he had autism, right? We're just Calvin is Calvin. There's no need for us to talk about what he has. Like, and I still say today, like Calvin is who he is and we all are, right? You know, we all have different abilities and identities and what makes us who we are.
But we have to learn to accept others for who they are. And that was the change that Megan and I had to go through. So how did we do it? It was a lot of one externally processing and then also for ourselves taking time to process things individually.
And that's different for both of us. I like to journal and write things down. She likes to talk to people. So she would talk to her mom or dad or different people who could help her to understand it. It's a lot of researching, right? It's informed pessimism. So we started learning as much as we could about this and getting connected to resources and
you know figuring out what's next you know our first diagnosis with him was a educational diagnosis we got it from the local school district that's who technically gave us a diagnosis and it came from a school psychologist but then we started figuring out well what do we have to do to get him more support and we became more and more informed and as we became informed we realized how big of a mountain lied
ahead of us, you know, and what it looked like. And I think part of that is what took us into this kind of valley of despair where, you know, this is where most people quit their change. If we're talking about running a marathon, this is when you get to the point where it's like, holy smokes, I'm running these double digit miles. It's getting really difficult. I'm at like mile 16,
Mile Saturday or Sunday that I'm gonna run and I know it's gonna take me two and a half three hours It's gonna you know, I'm planning everything around it and it's just uncomfortable. It's difficult and it's when you want to quit It's like when the most pain is there but where there is the most pain is where there is the most growth and
And for us with Calvin, that was getting his medical diagnosis, you know, going back through more and more testing and assessments and conversations with different doctors and psychologists and ABA therapists. And, you know, and there was a lot of pain. And I think we were in that valley of despair because we had to consistently answer questions of can he do this? Does he do that?
And it wasn't fun to talk about. But you know what? Doing it ultimately gave us peace of mind. That challenge of going through all of that and getting that diagnosis, which ultimately we got in October of the year that he was diagnosed.
originally diagnosed. We got the first diagnosis in May and then it took us until October to get the medical diagnosis and we pushed for that. You know, a lot of people told us it would take longer and that we wouldn't get in to see someone at MUSC and we didn't. We found another way to make it happen.
As we did that, part of what we did to get out of that valley of despair is we started sharing our reality. So I still remember the very first time that I posted anywhere on social media that Calvin had autism. And I posted it with the lyrics to The Greatest Showman, A Million Dreams. And when I posted it, it made me think about
You know, what his future looked like, right? You know, it says in the song, every night I lie in bed, the brightest colors fill my head. A million dreams are keeping me awake. Now, I thought about that a lot for Calvin because there are a million things keeping me awake.
But also part of Calvin's struggle with autism is he's extremely active and he doesn't want to fall asleep. So that's something that we've always kind of said, you know, he's got a million things going through his head. You know, a million dreams is all it's going to take. A million dreams for the world we're going to make.
And I love that line, the world we're going to make, because if you're going to move from the valley of despair and move into informed optimism and embrace change, whatever it might be, you have to take control of what you can make, what you can do.
And the way you look at things. We all go through that valley of despair, but what are you going to make of it? Are you going to just let it happen to you or are you going to happen to life? One of the things I hear when I'm coaching people and when I'm talking to a lot of people is they will tell me things happen to them.
I don't think there's anything in life that happens to you. I think things just happen and we need to make what we can of them. So that's the challenge. You've got to think about what it is you're going to do to move from that valley of despair into informed optimism. You know, as we do that, the possibility of success starts to increase. You start to be in more of a positive emotional state and zone, right?
you start seeing some benefits of your action. This for us was when we started getting him some therapy and pushing for that and learning things that we could do with him and the acceptance of it and celebrating small victories was huge with Calvin. And it's huge in any change cycle that you're going through. It's extremely important that you take the time to...
celebrate the things that are going well. Cause if not, you're going to sit in that valley of despair and then you're going to eventually quit whatever cycle of change you're going through. And you're going to go all the way back to the beginning of, you know, uninformed optimism again and thinking, Oh, I can do this new challenge. I couldn't run a marathon. I'm going to run a half marathon. And the same thing's going to happen. You're still going to go through informed pessimism and valley of despair and back through informed optimism. Um,
And when you're in that informed optimism stage, you have to keep going. You can't stop. You know, I think a lot of times people are like, oh, I'm doing it. And then we stop and then you don't actually run the marathon. You know, you've got to follow all the way through it.
And then you can be a marathoner. You know, you get to that fifth stage of success and fulfillment. You know, with us, with Calvin right now, I feel like we're in that stage. There's still lots of changes that are happening. He's about to go to kindergarten. Maybe no one really knows what's happening with that. But there is lots of change constantly. But
But we're in success and fulfillment when it comes to us accepting him being on the autism spectrum. You know, I now volunteer and work with Champion Autism Network as a trainer. And I've learned as much as I can. And I've spoken at different organizations for them. You know, and we've raised money for CAN. And, you know, we consider ourselves part of the autism community here in Myrtle Beach. And we advocate for it. And, you know, Megan...
raised money for Autism Speaks and the half marathon that she ran. You know, we've gone from this initial uninformed optimism and then pessimism and despair to a place of success and fulfillment. And I need you to hear me say that took time.
And it does for all of us. Change is something that you're consistently experiencing and you have to work through these cycles. You can't skip one. You can't just say, oh, you know what? I'm not going to care about this. There's going to be no valley of despair. No, if it is any type of change that is difficult, you're going to go through that and that's okay. You have to...
admit that to yourself. And that's why we say embracing the suck of change because you have to embrace it. You can't just pretend it doesn't exist. It's there. It is a part of change. We don't like it as humans. So do what you can to make the most of it and start by embracing the suck of it. That's the challenge, folks. If you want to keep chasing the awesome life, you got to embrace the suck of change. This has only been about 15 minutes worth of change.
And I hope you will be able to refer back to this the next time you are experiencing some type of difficult change in your life. And I hope that you are able to use this content to live a little more awesomely. I'll catch you all on the next one.
Welcome to Chasing the Awesome Life, your weekly guide to making life just a little bit more awesome. Because we all have goals and dreams, but y'all, the struggle is real. So take a little time today to equip yourself with the tools and the inspiration to be more awesome in all aspects of your life.
There's no topic I won't cover. From kids to college to the joys and the struggles, it can all be awesome if you just choose to chase it. So get ready to take some notes and then, more importantly, take some awesome action because this is Chasing the Awesome Life.
