To Cope With Change
As a kid I loved fishing. I confess, my early memories of fishing are filled more with untangling fishing twine than catching fish. Learning to cast with accuracy is a key element to fishing success. This requires a set of motions: holding the line, releasing the reel, flicking/throwing the line out as you release your finger off the rod. All this needs to be done in a smooth motion with confidence. One wrong move, a single motion done out of sequence, a lack of fluidity or confidence and one is rewarded with a ‘bird’s nest’ of finishing twine. Untangling this gives ample time for reflection on what to do differently next time.
Over time, with advice and learning through multiple attempts and practice, I am now a good caster. The skills learnt have allowed me to try different forms of fishing like fly fishing and deep sea fishing. This is the ebb and flow of life. We live, learn, apply that learning and grow and develop over the years. There is a rhythm that resonates.
This rhythm is under assault. The ebb and flow of life is in a typhoon that is crashing waves upon the structures we know. The information revolution is crashing in on ‘life as we have known it’ with each pounding wave of change followed in ever increasing succession by the next.
Constant change results in the need for constant adaptation.
The challenge, of course, is that people do not like to constantly change. It pushes our comfort zones and stretches our mind to be constantly scanning and assessing, evaluating and calculating what we might need to do next.
Added to this is the challenge that your reference points can rapidly become outdated and irrelevant. Reference points help us cope, help us survive. They form part of our coping mechanism and comfort zone. Intertwined with our reference points are our values and beliefs.
Values and beliefs are anchors. They birth our life mission and determine our destination point - our vision. To adapt well we must untangle our reference points from our values and beliefs.
Reference points are sign posts. They change as the environment changes and we evolve. Part of managing change well is to ensure your reference points are relevant. This requires constant learning. Counter intuitively, part of developing is unlearning. It is natural for us to assimilate our identity with our knowledge. We are more than our knowledge. In 1637, Descartes aptly captured this when he wrote “I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.” Our ability to think is our key to freedom. When we allow ourselves to receive new information we are more capable of allowing facts and information that served us well in the past to be redundant. Letting this go allows you to be open to learning new information.
Untangling a bird's nest takes time. Learning new information requires the same. Without it, one is destined to dwell in frustration - hanging onto a an intertwined mess of outdated signpost posts caught up in the the image of self.
How do you ensure you learn consistently? What ‘mind-food’ do you feed yourself to enable growth? To best manage the waves of change, upskilling to sail the seas is essential.
I would love to hear from you how you keep yourself up-to-date, informed, educated and prepared in this ever changing environment. I will share and discuss this more in our next blog post.
Here’s to your success!
