Change Is A Good Thing
How to sidestep fear and turn changes to your own advantage
The romantic view of startup life is one of pizza and energy drinks, ping pong tables and video calls from the coffee shop. It’s one of flexibility married with personal accountability, where one should always push forward and innovate, no matter what. Work hard, play hard, and do it over and over again until you succeed.
I have lived this life for a few years, and while there is an underbelly of pressure, stress and sleepless nights to the idyllic vision above, it was nevertheless an experience I would not trade for anything else. Money was not great, but I saw a lot and learned a lot, and we had a reasonably happy ending.
One of the biggest challenges the rest of the crew and I had to face was the frequent and sudden changes in both product direction and operations. This is a common trait of startup life, and one that people, including myself, often struggle with.
Fear of change manifests itself with different degrees of intensity in different people. Some see change as a short period of discomfort, while for others it becomes an obstacle to achieve greatness not only in their career, but also in the broader context of their life journey.
And then there is that other group of people, completely different from the ones above: those who ride on the wave of change to build a successful life for themselves.
How do they do it? Can this skill be learned? I think so, let’s have a look.
Inevitable change
John used to pick up a cup of joe on his way to work. His favorite coffee chain had a shop just one block away from the office, and over the months he timed his online order perfectly so that it would be ready to go by the time he got off public transport.
One fine spring morning, his life was turned upside down. There was a notice on the door as he entered to collect his order. The shop was relocating three blocks away. He wouldn’t be able to take the detour every day and arrive to the office on time for his daily meetings.
His mood soured after seeing the notice, and he was cranky for the whole day.
In the evening, over dinner with his wife Annie, he brought up the issue as he still could not shake it off.
“It ain’t so bad,” Annie said, “you’re drinking too much coffee already. Besides, if you really want to keep getting coffee from them, you can get up 10 minutes earlier and take a detour to the new shop anyway. Nobody’s stopping you.”
In the end, John switched to homemade coffee instead. He would get up 10 minutes early as Annie suggested, but would make coffee for both instead of going to the shop, and would prepare a flask each to take to work.
“It turns out my coffee is better, and healthier too!”, John thought.
Humans are creatures of habit. Change disrupts habits and routines, and therefore it is a source of stress. Our fear of change comes from this disruption, as well as the uncertainty of what comes next.
However, change is also an opportunity to improve our existing habits and behavior, and achieve a better quality of life.
Therefore, one should always approach change with an open mind.
When faced with a change that will disrupt our habits, however big or small that might be, keeping an open mind might reveal opportunities to turn the situation to our own advantage. Open-mindedness means challenging our preconceptions to allow for outcomes which might be different from what we have seen before, and can be summed up into a question we can ask ourselves when visualizing the future post-change: is my projection of the outcome based on facts? Or is it born out of irrational fears?
When change is a choice
Mary and Sue were always together. They met in primary school and quickly became best friends, staying close through thick and thin over the years, and eventually graduating from the same university with an accounting degree.
After graduation, Mary went to work at a big shipping company near her hometown. The job was boring, but she had a stable income which allowed her to live a comfortable life.
Sue instead joined a startup. She was paid much less than Mary, but she was gaining exposure to different parts of the business every day. Maybe she wasn’t keeping up to date with fashion as Mary was, and she dined in less fancy restaurants, but she was happy.
Mary on the other hand was always bitter and would look down on Sue every time they met. Eventually, they fell out and stopped seeing each other.
Ten years later, Mary had to interview for a new job as her former company ran into financial troubles and had to close down. Imagine her surprise when she was introduced to her new CFO, only to discover that it was her former best friend Sue.
Sometimes, change presents itself as a choice. You can choose whether to enact the change / seize the opportunity, or decline it and keep with the current situation.
Fear in this case is more about the unknown: you know what you leave behind, but you don’t know what you will find. The new could be worse than the old, and that scares a lot of people off.
The thing is: it could also be better. Much better.
How do you decide whether to go with the change in this case? Let’s look at some considerations.
The benefits of maintaining the status quo
How is the current situation good / bad for you? Can the change make things better / worse? Also, consider whether the current situation is sustainable over time, or whether it will eventually degrade anyway. This allows you to gather a clearer picture of your starting point.
Projecting the change
Project potential outcomes and their likelihood of happening, and write them down. This allows you to rationalize the result of the change, and make it easier to process. The probability of each outcome is an important point of consideration, especially if you are a pessimist. After all, you want to ensure that you don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill.
Listening to your instinct
What does your gut tell you? How does each potential outcome make you feel? It is important to determine whether the change will bring an overall improvement or deterioration of your lifestyle, especially in the longer run. Sometimes change is an investment that takes time to bear its fruit. Are you prepared to put up with a short term degrade to achieve a longer term upgrade? Is the change worth it?
Once the decision has been made
Assuming you decided to go for the change, you should then start directing your energy towards the best outcome. Visualize it every day, and think about what you can do to make it more likely to happen. This review process can help you catch mistakes early, and course correct as necessary.
Also, let’s not forget that dedication is a key component of success. Making the decision to go for the change does not guarantee that the best outcome will magically happen. We need to turn up every day, and do the work.
Big change, small change
Cody was stubborn. He never liked people telling him what to do or how to live his life. He had a no-compromise approach to problems. Either his way or no way. That made it difficult for him to work within teams, and required a lot of energy from those around him to get anything done.
On the other hand, he was very good at his work, and he got away with his flaws.
This persnickety attitude extended to all aspects of his life, not just his profession. He liked his underwear organized with a specific system, and his shirts ironed a certain way. He had a set of rules he wanted his house to be run under, and accepted no compromise. His wife put up with it for many years, until she couldn’t anymore and left him.
Cody was now on his own, folding his clothes and ironing his shirts. Life was harder than it had ever been, and he could find nobody who would listen to his complaints.
When facing change, we need to determine whether it is worth to make a fuss. This is especially true when multiple parties are involved: maybe a change that is small and insignificant for us can bring great benefits to others.
Karma and good deeds discussions aside, this might also be beneficial to us in the longer run. We never know when we might get stuck in a rut and need a helping hand, or when our success might become dependent on somebody else’s assist. Compromising when the change required is small is almost often a win-win.
What if the change is big? OK in this case you can make a fuss, and follow the indications from previous sections to maximize the likelihood of a positive outcome out of it.
Turning it around
To close, let’s remind ourselves who is in the driver’s seat for our lives. We are. That is: us, not change.
We shouldn’t let change tell us what to do or how to live. We should take change, spin it, and make it work for us. This requires a shift in perception from considering change to be a negative element (fear) to it being a positive force (opportunity).
This shift will allow us to find the silver linings of inevitable change, and to identify the right choices we can make to attract a better future for ourselves, and for others around us.
How do we make this shift? We can use a technique called anxiety reappraisal to shift our perception of the situation from one of anxiety to one of excitement. This technique can be summed up in two simple steps:
Step 1 — Recognize the similarity between anxiety and excitement
Anxiety and excitement produce very similar reactions in the body. They are both an aroused state in which the heart is pumping and adrenaline is rushing through our system. The difference between the two is in the mind’s interpretation of the situation: whereby fear is elicited from negative thoughts and focus on catastrophic outcomes, excitement is instead driven by positive thoughts and the prospect of victory.
Step 2 — Relabel your feelings
The second step is as simple as telling ourselves “I am not scared, I am excited”, and thinking about the potential positive outcomes of the change. Some might find external devices helpful to shift this perception. A good example of such a device is the walk-up song baseball players use to get psyched up before their at-bat.
Anxiety reappraisal might be difficult at first, especially if you are a pessimist. However, practice makes perfect. You can start by applying this approach against smaller instances of fear / anxiety, e.g. when preparing for a presentation, and examining the results at the end of the event. You will likely find that keeping a positive attitude favors positive outcomes, which would then make this mental shift easier to perform every time.
Thanks for sticking around till the end of the article. I hope you found some useful insights that can help you turn around whatever change you are facing into an opportunity for success. Feel free to get in touch to let me know how you get on.
Until then, keep on making your life better every day!
References
Human Beings as Creatures of Habit
Erkki Kilpinen, University of Helsinki ( PDF )
Choice, Habit and Evolution
Geoffrey M Hodgson, University of Hertfordshire ( PDF )
Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement
Alison Wood Brooks — Harvard Business School, American Psychological Association ( PDF )
