Navigating change by being yourself

As a world right now, we are in transition. Global change is happening, whether we like it or not, and for many of us, this change is having signifiant impacts on our lives and/or our careers.

I’m hearing the frontlines of this every day. My clients are navigating unexpected job loss, switching careers, stepping up as leaders, building businesses. They’re moving house, moving in or out of relationships, trying to make sense of loss, change and disruptions to their daily lives.

As much as these times may be shaking our foundations— we’re equipped for this journey. Life itself is all about change and transition. We’re always growing, being stretched, experiencing something for the first time.

Sometimes that's not easy.

Sometimes change sneaks up out of nowhere when we least expect it, like it has most recently for many of us. Sometimes that transition is unwanted, so we fight it. Sometimes we're all tangled up in the story that we're telling ourselves about how it's going to be. That happens even when it's a transition we're excited to be in. You see how we are. We’re human.

What's easy to forget is that we’ve been here before.

From the time we’re born, we are faced with one new experience after the other. Every single time we have moved into a new phase of our life, we’ve walked into the unknown. Every single time we set out to learn something new, we marinated in that transitional space between having no idea what we’re doing and mastering it.

Every. Single. Time.

And yet. Somewhere along the way, we carve out our comfort zones. We paint the unknown as a scary and shadowy figure that we'd better steer clear of.

We call it Transition with a capital T. We completely forget that, really, we’ve been here, done this enough times that we've got a whole toolbox full of tricks. Some of which will now come in quite handy.

Let's put a different lens on this for a moment. Let’s stop for a moment obsessing about the whats and the hows long enough to leverage what we do know something about: ourselves.

What is this transition in your life asking from you?

Who do you need to be to find optimism and opportunities in the challenges as you move from Point A to Point B? What is this transition, this gap, this new fork in the road asking from you now?

Often, we focus on what we need to be doing or what needs to get done. We make lists of projects, tasks and strategies. We want the map. We consult the experts about what they did or are doing. We avoid just being who we are and asking ourselves who we are being called to be next.

What if it were, though, all about who we are being?

If you're feeling challenged by the current state of the world, by what’s next, by a big (or even a small) transition in your life or career (and all over the world, many of us are feeling challenged right now), I invite you to turn your focus away from all the doing and trying to predict the future.

Let’s refocus instead on how you are being and what is happening right here and now, in the present.

What part of yourself needs to show up right now to navigate what's changing?
How might you act differently if you let your unique natural strengths handle this challenge?
You have made successful transitions before. What did it take?
What changes when you allow yourself to be led by your core values?
When your future vision becomes reality, how will you be different? What part of that difference can you experience right now?

Of course, navigating uncertainty, disruption and monumental changes can be challenging. We all need support at these times when the ground under us is shifting and we are still learning (or building) what's next. But why not start with ourselves first?

Tell me... who are you going to be today?