We all want change. Few welcome taking the initiative to change. And even fewer embrace change when it happens to them. Transition's uncertainty can be terrifying. But it also open us up to opportunity. Start with rethinking assumptions.
For example, do Mondays need to be bad days?
Transitions and change
Are they the same thing?
We typically see transition as a passage from one form, state, style, or place to another—we're familiar with where we are, and have hopes and dreams about where we're going.
Moving to a new country, a brand new house or school, starting a new job are changes. How we feel about them is transition. Going from what we know into our future can feel daunting.
“Doesn’t it feel like the second you figure anything out in life, it ends and you’re forced to start all over again?” Soccer player, coach, two-time Olympic gold medalist, and FIFA Women's World Cup champion Abby Wambach experienced that transition when she retired.
Our transitions are filled with opportunities,
and we need to cease them.
Transitions have a silver lining, a gift to use. They give us a permission slip to reset and rethink our assumptions and how we go about what's next. If we could go back and tell our younger self one thing what would it be?
Companies need transitions as well
Jess Lee, investing partner at Sequoia Capital and the former chief executive officer of Polyvore, says startups have a first phase, development, which is about proving “the value hypothesis,” and a second phase, when founding teams provide “the growth hypothesis.”
When we're in transition, we are active participants in making sense of what's happening. We search for or open a new door and we internalize what we need to do to go through it and prepare.
That's the gift we can use to discover new opportunities, the silver lining.
Change is adaptation.