Leadership Essential: Stop Fearing Change
Most of us have a jar that accumulates our monetary change over time. We do this because change is a pain! It's heavy and rattles around in our pockets or purses when we try to carry it around. It's uncomfortable and difficult to manage. Yet, change is unavoidable, and the way we manage monetary change in our lives is the same way many people deal with change in general.
Our bodies change in even the smallest of ways each and every second as we age. The seasons change. Our children grow and learn (changing as they go). The world changes; admittedly not always for the good, but it is change nonetheless. So, with all of this change around us, you’d think we would be used to change by now. You would think that we had figured out how to manage it and stopped fearing the change in our lives. Yet, we still fear change… run from it… attempt to compartmentalize it in an effort to keep it at bay! For all of the effort, we get a giant lump of change (stored in a "jar") that we never utilize to our fullest advantage. We know it's there. We count it, track it, and yet, we push it aside to the point that it weighs us down.
Why does change frighten us?
Change in and around us requires us to change with it, when we'd much rather stay comfortable, feet firmly planted, in what we know. Being with the unknown—doing things that are new and even slightly out of our comfort zones—is difficult for most people, but to manage change successfully you have to learn and grow with it. You do that by embracing the change that comes your way. Leave your FEAR (not change) in the jar!
If you attempt to control, compartmentalize, bury, or even accumulate change, you risk completely missing out on the opportunity that change brings you. Does that mean change is always easy? Of course not! Change is weighty, but it is also valuable. It has worth and when you use change as a means to learn and grow, you open up a whole new world of possibility.
As W.E.B. DuBois said, "The most important thing to remember is this: To be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become."