I sit on the edge of a precipice. Whatever way I choose seems fraught with danger, unknowns and certain mishaps. So here I sit, watching… waiting…

It is a common occurrence.

Whether it be a rocky outcrop, or in front of the computer screen at work, people are faced with this dilemma. The dangers of change are far more unacceptable than the danger of doing the same old safe thing.

This leads to a lot of unhappy people sitting there, doing nothing except what they are safe doing, because that means they will be OK, they will be safe from these unknown dangers… where ever they are!’, ‘It’s not till we are faced with this “unknown danger” that we realize how capable we are of surviving in the face of fear and disaster but taking the step into this dimension is so fearfully dangerous that most of us never contemplate it (or do anything more than contemplate it)… so we continue doing the job we hate, the work we loath.

Around us sit the same people, all doing the same. When we mention change, they shy away… “That’s far too dangerous, you could lose everything, your safe job, the salary, think of your wife and kids, think of your responsibilities”

So here I sit… watching… waiting…

Change doesn’t need to be a painful experience, you know. You can start down any path you wish without causing pain and distress, but you have to start. That would be the biggest hurdle anyone would be faced with. Starting is the most dangerous part… but it may lead you to your dreams.

We all seem to concentrate on this “change” and yet change is easy… once you start! or in the odd case, when it is started for you.

Once you have started down this road, it’s a matter of putting one foot in front of the other in front of the other.

“Sure,” I hear you say, “I might get lost, I might make mistakes, I might stuff up”

Sure, you might, but don’t we do that every day anyway? Most often, though, we get away with our mistakes and stuff-ups. Like when something happens to us, we can brush it off, say it doesn’t matter and we carry on. So why do we put attention on making mistakes when we attempt or think about make a change… usually they will happen anyway, and we will “get away with them,” in other words, they won’t affect anything drastically.

Change management is another statement we hear from time to time, especially in business. There are people out there employed to manage change in organizations.

If you would like to read more on this, read this article here

It has become a subject in itself, but basically it comes down to one individual… you, and how you deal with something not being the same as it was. There are four different ways this can affect you

1/ You cause the change in your environment

2/ Another causes the change in your environment

3/ You cause the change in another’s environment

4/ Another causes a change in another’s environment

Believe it or not… each of these occurrences will have an effect on you to a greater or lesser degree. We sit here doing our stuff, minding our own business and our friend gets fired. This not only throws your friend into a state of change, but also, there is this trickle down effect that impinges on you.

People do not respond well to change yet it is a constant… everything is always in a state of change. It’s only when it is too fast or too slow for us that we get affected and it is more often than not, when this change is too fast. If it is too slow, we tend to be affected, but there is less of a dramatic impingement.

So here we sit… watching… waiting…

If we could embrace this change with open arms, look at it as an opportunity rather than a disaster, we would fair much better. The change, whatever it may be, would happen anyway. The difference is that we would look at it differently. The change still happened but we didn’t get affected by it so much.

In most cases, by the time the change comes about, there has been a lot of action and some pretty big tell tale signs have been flashing. Because we are safely cocooned in our shell, we don’t even look until the change is forced upon us. This can be our downfall.

Look around you, there is constant motion (even if it is just the curser flashing at you on the screen) there is motion. This is change. Each word you read, each breath you take a change occurs. It is at our pace some we hardly notice yet it is there, but start taking deep breaths, quickly and deeply and it isn’t long before we feel giddy, you see, we have sped up this change, overloaded the system and it throws us. We now have an oversupply of oxygen to the system and the body reacts. We weren’t prepared… and yet we created this ourselves.

Wow! Now you can correct this pretty simply, just by regulating your breathing… This is what change management is all about, having the organization breathe in a regular fashion, compensating for the differing requirements as it goes along. This is what can be done if you start to look at what is happening around you and start to move with the flow rather than sitting here, watching… waiting…

Prediction and Knowledge are the two primary weapons against change affecting you to a great degree. Let’s face it; change is going to happen… It’s our reaction to it that usually stays the same, unless we make a concerted effort to embrace what is happening.

If you know something is going to happen, then you are able to more readily prepare. If you are knowledgeable, you are able to make the decisions and take the action necessary to embrace whatever change is happening. So start to look at what is happening around you and instead of looking at this negatively, find out what are the positive effects of this. We have already discovered that change <b>is</b> going to happen. Let’s become knowledgeable to have an effect on it, rather than it affecting us!

Of course, we can sit here watching… waiting…

Until next week

Cheers… Bill

Bill Gray

Bill is a Business Coach. Working with Individuals, Businesses and Organisations to create better environments and to develop and enhance business ”potential”, into successful business practices.

Sydney, Australia

Ph +61 413 949 521

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