Most of us don’t like change at any time in our lives. But to get ahead in your career you must learn strategies to overcome change at work.
It’s no secret that most people are averse to change. When it comes to change at work, this adversity is especially important to manage, as the impact on you, those around you, and even your career can have a direct dramatic impact.
Last time we looked at some strategies to help you overcome your fears, but there are some other ways you can steer yourself through choppy waters at work and become a better person.
One very effective technique to overcome your fear of impending change in the workplace is through meditation. It only takes a few minutes and can be done at your desk. If you don’t have a private office, you can meditate in your car or even in the bathroom whenever you’re feeling tense – anywhere you can be alone and uninterrupted. Of course, with many working from home, this option is even easier to slot into your workday. Regular meditation will make you feel much more calm, relaxed, and peaceful. We recommend practicing morning and evening, and whenever your anxiety spikes throughout the process of change that you’re experiencing.
The key to success with meditation is practicing it each day. Each day, it will cleanse your mind and prepare you for much higher levels of success and joy in every part of your life. Don’t fit meditation around your life; fit your life around your meditation practice. There are numerous books and websites that will teach you techniques and methodologies, but the overwhelming weight of evidence shows that it works for a vast proportion of practitioners.
One good thing that could come of a change in the workplace dynamic is the opportunity to learn new skills, or ways of doing things that are more effective. If you do the same thing day in and day out, you will never learn to develop new skills. Even if you or your colleagues are terrible at a particular new task at first, you will eventually learn how to do it successfully and you may even develop a mastery of these new skills and duties, or who knows, you could become a subject matter expert! At the end of the day, nurturing new skills and specialties helps everyone at a company become better-rounded, talented individuals.
After all, we are all essentially creatures of habit. There’s a very good reason people have habits and stick with them. Habits are familiar, and people like what’s familiar. Take away your morning coffee and social media catch up, and we get grumpy. Take away your routine and replace it with something unfamiliar, and you’ll be anxious and your default position will be resistance. If the change has to happen quickly, just be aware that you’re all in the same boat. This isn’t a conspiracy targeting you, and it’s not being done to make things worse, it’s being done to make the company more productive and you along with it. So have patience. It will get better. From there, conversation will revolve around concrete matters, not merely the anxiety of the unfamiliar.
Change can allow you to show your true colours. Remember, those who accept change with a positive attitude and work hard to cope with the difference in their work environment are those who will do well in the long term. Unfortunately, there might be cases of some colleagues who refuse to accept the changes and work against the goals of the company. These are the kinds of workers you cannot and should not be aligned with and the sooner you can accept and adapt to change, the better you will be.
The bottom line is, change isn’t going anywhere - so you’ll need to learn how to overcome your fear of it. Change is the new, constant reality of any workplace. And if it’s not, it ought to be; because the riskiest thing any business can do in the new, uncertain world order is to not change.
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