Shannah Kennedy: How to thrive through change

No matter what the change – a worldwide pandemic or relationship break-up – there are simple and easy ways to navigate through it.

Change has always been the great disrupter, forever bringing uncertainty and unease, but with the right tools we can use it to our advantage.

This is the belief and learned experience of strategic life coach Shannah Kennedy, who says, no matter what the change – a worldwide pandemic and seemingly never-ending lockdowns, for example – there are simple and easy ways to navigate through it.

It was the beginning of Covid last year that inspired Kennedy to write her latest book, Plan B, offering readers a road map through change, but her principles apply to countless scenarios.

“Covid sparked this book, definitely, but I’ve been coaching people through change for 20 years,” the best-selling author of The Life Plan said.

When we hide behind our emotions and we don’t want to look at them or feel them or put a word to them or acknowledge them, they hang around for a long time. Picture: iStock

“Change can be the loss of a partner, a health scare, it can be a break-up with a boyfriend, any change like you have lost your job, you lost your business … but it can also be change where you want to evolve and grow.”

Here’s her expert advice:

MAKE YOU NUMBER ONE

For Kennedy, her major life change occurred 20 years ago when extreme dedication to her work ended with chronic fatigue.

“I was in corporate sport, so I was working with about 200 elite athletes in 10 different sports in sponsorship world,” she says.

“I became my job, I loved my job, I was obsessed with my job. I didn’t want to take any days off. I didn’t have any self-care strategies.

Shannah Kennedy was one of the first certified Life Coaches in Melbourne, and since she released her first book, The Life Plan, it’s sold over 100,000 copies. Picture: Supplied

“I have that real A-type, perfectionist personality and it cost me my health because I got chronic fatigue by the time I was 30 and I’ve had to manage it for the next 20 years.

“But my life is better for having chronic fatigue because I’m so mindful, I’m so awake, I’m present because if I do too much, I’m in bed for a week. So I have to pace myself and I think I’m a better human being because of it.”

PLAN FOR CHANGE TO AFFECT YOU

Kennedy says no matter how different the change is, the way through can be broken down into four stages: recognise and respond; restore and recover; redirect and rest; and rejoice and radiate.

“As we go through the journey of change, all of these steps happen and nobody really talks about them,” says Kennedy.

“When we hide behind our emotions and we don’t want to look at them or feel them or put a word to them or acknowledge them, they hang around for a long time.

Stop and take a breath, recognise and respond to feelings instead of running from them. Picture: Supplied

“The whole beginning of the book is really about let’s just stop and take a breath, let’s recognise and respond to our feelings, maybe our sense of grief – people are grieving that they can’t even go to a cafe and sit and have a coffee, and that might have been the highlight of their day, or going to a gym class or going to see family or our loved ones that are in hospital.”

USE THE GRIEF STEPS

Kennedy says a major part of understanding why you feel a certain way is learning to accept it as normal and not something that is wrong with you.

“I think if you go through change, even people in Covid at the moment, you might feel like ‘I can’t be bothered and I don’t know why’ or ‘I feel really anxious’ or ‘the breaking news every day is really upsetting me’,” she says.

“They could go to the grief cycle in the book and they could instantly see: ‘OK, this is normal, and if it’s normal then what can I do next?’

“It will say take a breath … What is the gift in this? What is the gift in lockdown today? And you have to find it every day.”

While grief is different for every person, there are five main stages people may experience: denial; anger; bargaining; depression; and acceptance.

Individuals may not experience them all.

Kennedy says: “It’s important to understand all the emotions of the grief cycle so you can take a breath and say: ‘Actually, I’m feeling slack today or angry or sad or annoyed or distressed or anxious.’

Shannah Kennedy released her second book Plan B. Picture: Supplied

“When we can acknowledge it and we can stop and just feel it – I feel like it’s in my tummy or my throat’s closing, for example – we can take some breaths and we can sit with it for a minute and acknowledge it, it actually passes through.

“It’s when we avoid it and we get angry and we go and drink more wine or eat more sugar and we just run away from it, we have big issues that build and build and build.

“Just sit and acknowledge it and sit with it for one minute.

“After a minute it just disappears. It’s incredible, it’s life-changing.

“And then you can get the opportunity to reframe it and you can’t do that if you’re running.”

Plan B by Shannah Kennedy is out now through Penguin

Originally published as Shannah Kennedy: How to thrive through change