New Zealand has a standard 40-hour working week, but for many working people this is a minimum, with real world work requirements meaning they often exceed this. However, as life gets busier and social expectations on wellness increase, there has been a shift towards desiring a better work-life balance. The result being that some people choose to work less and have more flexibility.

That can be great if an employee can make a conscious change with support from their employer, families, and others. But what if you don’t have a choice? What if something happened that forced you to make a change? How would you cope with that?

These were questions I was suddenly confronted with when, four years ago, at the age of just 40, I suffered an infarct stroke. It came out of nowhere and turned my life upside down. Prior to this I worked long hours and focussed on developing my career.

So, what was the result of the stroke? My brain suffered an enormous impact, which required me to spend five weeks in hospital and undergo months of rehabilitation, which is still on-going. I lost the ability to see, to walk and focus on everyday tasks. I spent every hour of every day doing exercises to “rewire” my brain so I could see again, balance myself enough to walk unaided and carry out cognitive tasks for focus and memory retention. All my senses were heightened, in particular, my hearing, so I now had “supersonic” hearing that would make me hear everything and I didn’t have the ability to block out any noise. Earplugs and headphones became my norm. Going back to work in an open plan environment was going to be extremely difficult. My emotions were all over the place, and it was not unusual for me to cry. To top it off, insomnia had set in, and fatigue was a constant battle.

What do you do when your new life is nothing like your old life, and you can’t do things that you once took for granted? You need to manage change!

How did I manage the major change in my life?

I started with acceptance. I had to accept my new life and work out how it was going to look and work for me. It’s not easy but, it’s critical to allow yourself to be okay with the changes and start to embrace those changes. Social isolation was a big change, and I had to accept that I couldn’t be included like I was previously (I was a bit of a social butterfly), and have the confidence that it’s OK to miss out.

I needed to prioritise. What was once important to me was no longer. Achievements became important. What appeared to be small achievements to others were huge achievements for me, and I needed to celebrate these. I was asked by my occupational therapist to list the five most important things to me. My initial answer was family, friends, work, social life, and sports. I was asked why is your health and yourself not on that list? I then had to re-prioritise and make sure my health was high on that list.

Managing change requires resilience. You need to remain positive and mentally tough to continue with the new journey and its obstacles. There are good and bad days, but you must keep soldiering on, as hard as that may be. Sometimes you have to put a smile on your face even though you are far from smiling on the inside!

It is important to plan and find new ways to do things successfully. I can have moments of short-term memory lapses, so I have had to learn to write everything down”¦everything! I also utilise my diary/calendar to ensure I know what I am doing and when.

Patience and tolerance are important, both towards others (as they don’t understand what you are going through and just want to help you) and towards yourself. I had to remember to be gentle on myself if mistakes were made or things didn’t work out on the first attempt. This was a big lesson as I am my own biggest critic.

Once you have accepted, prioritised and planned it is important to set goals. This journey I was now on meant that my goals were now different, so I started small and made sure they were achievable. I started with walking to my letterbox and back. It seemed at the time like a marathon! Over the next 12 months, I reset my goals to a walk to the end of the road, around the block and eventually achieved my goal after two years of a 5km walk! I have now just completed the Generation Homes Women’s Triathlon held at Mount Maunganui. This goal took a lot of planning and resilience.

Help and support are crucial when effectively managing change. It’s OK to ask for and to accept help. I was lucky to have great support from family, friends, work colleagues and from my employer, Baker Tilly Staples Rodway Tauranga. After six months of rehabilitation and sign off to be able to start back at work, they literally picked up my desk from work and set me up at home. Over the next year, I progressed from 1 hour a day at home to 3 hours a day in the office. I then moved over the next 2 years to 4 full days in the office. I love that I am able to keep my hours to what suits me best and that Baker Tilly Staples Rodway has the confidence in me to allow me still to be part of the team and resume all my responsibilities.

Baker Tilly Staples Rodway played a HUGE part in my rehabilitation in the workplace and the ability to manage the change by continuing a healthy work-life balance.

I found other support groups through the BOP Stroke Foundation, which helped me meet other survivors. I was fortunate enough to be involved in a “young stroke survivors” group research project and a Facebook group that meets up regularly.