Change is happening for everyone at such a rapid pace now.
You may be focused on one thing and then get pulled into some other urgent request. It may feel like you are firefighting every day putting out the biggest fires first before you even can get to the smaller ones. That takes a lot of energy away from your priorities and forces you to be reactive all the time.
Although many people will struggle with change, the people who like to have control and structure in their lives will have the hardest time. You may hear them say things like, “I am not good with change or change is hard for me.”
There may be a few reasons why they believe this is true for them.
- They know how things work today and they don’t want to learn something new
- Change will take away their control of the situation
- They have been through past changes which were hard for them and they feel like this change will be the same
- Saying that they aren’t good with change is a defense mechanism that they use to try to prevent anyone from asking them to change things
- They don’t believe that the change is the right thing to do, so they struggle with executing it
I purposely used the word “believe” above before I shared these examples. These are the beliefs that they have told themselves and the stories that they tell everyone else. Did you know that your thinking drives your behavior? If you are automatically choosing to avoid change, then your actions will follow along. What impact could that way of thinking have on your perception or on your team?
What if you changed that belief? What if you questioned those beliefs and changed the story in your head? Flipping the story around to say how excited you are about the upcoming change may not be easy, but it could make a big difference for you.
Think of it as just changing an old habit that isn’t useful to you anymore.
Change is going to keep happening, so how do you want to show up for yourself and for your team? The bottom line is that you have a choice on what you believe about change and you can choose to avoid it or you can be excited about it. What choice will you make?