acquainted with. Needless to say, when it comes to adapting — to learning, unlearning and relearning — I’ve learned plenty by trial and error. As my husband and I support each other in pursuing our respective callings, and our children venture out into the world to explore and pursue theirs, I’m confident plenty more learning awaits.You cannot become who you aspire to be by staying who you are.We all want certainty and predictability, because our brains look for patterns. However, because life is the way it is, it can never stay the way it is.Whether in the form of a change of plans or a change of heart, change can be very unsettling and uncomfortable. Just because you’ve chosen to leave a job, relocate for a new job, taken on a bigger role or transitioned into an entirely new career, doesn’t mean it will, by default, be easy. If change were easy, everyone would be doing it.
But here’s the deal: you can’t become who you want to become by staying who you are. Which is what this chapter is about: helping you become more comfortable with the inherent discomfort of change so you can find hidden opportunities in the changes that are out of your control, and be more proactive in initiating the changes that you can control.
The more adept you are at initiating, navigating and managing change, the more successful you’ll be in your job today and in the future.As social psychologist Daniel Spurk found in his research on adaptability in the workplace, employees who are more adaptable are far more likely to leapfrog over those who aren’t. The cost of rigidity and resistance grows steeper by the day. Sociologist Benjamin Barber wrote, ‘I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures…I divide the world into the learners and non-learners’.
Why we resist change
How often have you heard people make reference to ‘the good old days?’ It’s generally not because life was any better 10 or 30 years ago than it is now but it reflects the affection most of us have for
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