Effectively Dealing with Change Means Shifting Your Mindset

The following is adapted from Get Rooted!, by Stacy Henry.

Whether you realize it or not, change brings with it a wide array of choices. You can act or react. You can hold onto the past, or you can face the future. You can resist the change or lean into it.

But whatever choice you decide to make, your mind is the place of origin. It’s the jumping-off point of every decision you’ve ever made — even those bad decisions that you don’t want anyone to know about. Believe me when I say I’ve made some of those decisions myself.

We make those poor decisions because we’re human and we’re all here learning, through our experiences, how to do things. But sometimes our humanness gets in the way and keeps us stuck. As humans, we have the tendency to focus on the negative things that happen to us.

It’s what some psychologists call a negativity bias. We’re also creatures of habit, and it’s our natural tendency to seek the path of least resistance. We want what’s safe and what’s familiar to us. If we find ourselves in a situation where we perceive our safety is being threatened or we’re in unfamiliar territory, our mind will naturally fight back. We’ll give in to that negativity bias and come up with all kinds of reasons why we need to stay where we are and why change is bad for us. When we do this, we limit our ability to progress and grow. Because we’re afraid of change, we unwittingly limit our own ability to change for the better.

When you and I actually make the conscious decision to lean into change and move through it, this doesn’t mean that we’re not acknowledging the other side. What it means is that we’re acknowledging all sides with the understanding that we have options.

And when we recognize we have options and lean into change, we’re choosing a path that will lead us to better opportunities and future growth. A change mindset is a growth mindset and a complete shift from our natural tendencies.

It’s important to recognize that shifting your mindset isn’t always an easy process. This is not the path of least resistance. It requires both time and effort. But that effort will pay off in the long run. Shifting your mindset is a matter of constantly checking yourself and making the same decision over and over again every step of the way.

For example, when I wake up in the morning on the wrong side of the bed (please note, I am not a morning person, so as you can imagine, this is a very real scenario), I can consciously choose to shift my mindset to one of gratitude instead. I can also choose to make the effort to lean into that decision in order to better influence the direction of my day.

Fifteen minutes into my day, when someone sends me an email outlining some reason why HR sucks, I may immediately find myself reverting to my human tendency of negativity. I may want to respond to the email with something negative of my own. This is exactly opposite of the mindset I had chosen for the day.

When this situation happens, I have to bring my mindset back to one of gratitude and remember that I have a choice. When other situations happen throughout the day that pull me away from my conscious decision to choose gratitude, I have to continue to remind myself of the choice I made that morning. It requires effort on my part. I have to act in those moments rather than react to the emotions that come from them. I have to choose gratitude over and over again until I’ve created a new pathway for my thoughts to go, and gratitude becomes my new mindset.

Doing the work to shift your mindset from one of comfort to a mindset of growth is fundamental to your ability to successfully manage change. No matter how you look at it, change equals growth.

For more advice on shifting your mindset, you can find Get Rooted! on Amazon.

Stacy Henry is the owner and founder of CenterBranch, a consulting and coaching firm dedicated to helping both companies and individuals perform to their highest potential. With services that include keynote speaking and workshop facilitation, women’s development, and leadership and executive coaching, CenterBranch enables people to be their best so they, and the companies they work for, may flourish. Stacy brings twenty-five years of experience to CenterBranch from a variety of global industries as an executive coach and HR business partner for C-suite leaders. In 2020, Stacy worked directly with the chief financial officer, chief communications officer, and the head of strategic development at Collins Aerospace when it merged with Raytheon Technologies. Prior to founding CenterBranch, she was the head HR partner for central functions at Collins Aerospace, a Raytheon Technologies company.