Don’t be afraid to embrace change, even when it’s a change you didn’t plan and didn’t want.
This is the first rule of capitalizing on change – whether it’s in your business, your professional life, or your personal life. There’s a lot you can use to your advantage if you’re willing to see reality, embrace it, and put away any latent fear threatening your sanity.
Often, when faced with a change of any kind, we give ourselves some room to be victims to it. We do this even with changes we planned or brought about. I will use myself as an example: I made a decision for my own health in a relationship a few years ago that resulted in the relationship ending. I didn’t want the relationship to end – I needed it to change. But that decision to change something resulted in a change I didn’t want. See my point? And I’ll be honest with you. Part of me really felt like a victim to things that were out of my control. But was I a victim? No. As we’re discussing this, you may take a moment to consider how allowing yourself to be a victim to circumstance impacts those around you or under your leadership.
The purpose of recounting this to you is to hold up an idea: You are never a victim of change. Nope, not even the ones you have zero hand in bringing about. If you allow yourself that room to be a victim, you will only fight against the change and thus miss the opportunity presented to you.
Back to my anecdote: The opportunity that this relationship ending afforded me was manifold. Time, growth, maturing, learning – so many good things came about as a result of this change in my life. However, the first thing I had to do was agree that the change had happened – the relationship had ended – and that it was a good thing.
This was really hard. It took me a long time to agree with that. Each day I made the decision to seek out that perspective – to embrace the change – was a day I saw an opportunity instead of a loss.
We can’t help it that as humans, we get attached to the reality we see on any given day. Let’s tie this back to you and your own situation today. Perhaps in your business, you were working all kinds of leads that seem to have dried up because no one is comfortable spending any money right now. Perhaps you have been furloughed because your company can’t afford to pay you at the moment. Perhaps you are working from home but are bored out of your mind because the fires that need to be addressed are not in your purview. If you are having a hard time embracing the fact that the world today is radically different from the one we had three weeks ago, you’re in good company. But rather than burying your head in the sand or squeezing your eyes shut until the dust has settled, I challenge you to open your eyes and see what you can see.
That’s where opportunities galore comes in!
If that relationship hadn’t ended, I don’t know that I would have started my business. I don’t think I would have. I certainly wouldn’t be where I am today. I wouldn’t have joined a dance crew. I wouldn’t have picked up new writing forms. So many things would never have come to fruition without that change that I never wanted!
This brings me to my next point, which is that the opportunity you receive may not be the one you wanted. It may not be packaged the way you would prefer. Does that make it not an opportunity?
For you in your business, you might be in a place where you have to close the business. Even in this dire, very undesirable situation there is opportunity for you. Is it enviable? No. None of us wants to be in that kind of situation. But if it’s time for that venture to end, it means there’s another venture waiting for you in the wings.
Activity: Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Like, actually take a deep breath. Now open your eyes. What’s the reality you want to hold onto that simply doesn’t exist anymore? It could be a business reality, a relational reality, a financial reality. What has changed? What opportunities do you have as a result of that change? How can you be proactive in embracing them?