Change – How to Survive Tip 7

All change means a loss of some sort. Yet often we are exhorted by those implementing the change to embrace it, get on with it, stop resisting! Resistance is seen as negative and disloyal.

Yet a certain amount of natural resistance is entirely natural, possibly inevitable. None of us reacts the same way to change and if we’ve had a lot of personal change, this may just be a step too far.

So my advice is, recognise what loss the change means to you and honour and acknowledge it. If it’s loss of colleagues, make sure you have a proper farewell. Ditto with a change of environment. This may be a communal activity like an office party or it may be something private, like a simple ritual of your own.

Whatever you choose to do, mark the change from one state to another in some way. It helps!

What sorts of things do you do to mark changes in your life?

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Change – How to Survive Tip 6

Are you a Magical Thinker?

Actually, you probably are; we all do it to an extent! But we tend to do it most when change is on the cards, a change or period of uncertainty over which we have no control.

What is Magical Thinking?

I first learned of the term magical thinking when working with young children undergoing trauma in their lives.  At one stage, it was received wisdom that children shouldn’t be told what was happening if it was considered bad or negative.

This proved to be singularly unhelpful to children and their chances in later life, as they then resorted to magical thinking. They filled the gaps in their knowledge with stories of their own.

And invariably these stories (magical thinking) made the children themselves somehow responsible for what was happening. In the absence of information sensitively and appropriately given they imagined the worse and even made themselves culpable.

Adults Use Magic Too…

When I went on to work with adults experiencing change and periods of uncertainty I realised that we all do it. In the absence of concrete, trustworthy information we make sense of the bits we do have by stringing together a story, usually with ourselves being worse off in some way. (see tip 5) And these stories can get passed around an organisation and come to be accepted as a universal truth.

If there is a gap in your knowledge of any impending change, beware of your magical thinking tendencies and try and get some straightforward information. Check out your sources! There’s no point in worrying unnecessarily!

For details of my next change seminar please click here. And if you have some examples of magical thinking in your organisation, please do share with us!