Adapting to Change

by Rashid Kotwal.

The only constant in life is change. This is the ultimate paradox.

How you adapt to the changes ahead will make the difference between whether you live a life you desire and create for yourself, or one in which “stuff” just happens to you.

There will be times in your life when things seem to be out of control and you are faced with what seem to be insurmountable challenges. You may think that life is dealing you a cruel blow. It is important to realise that it is not the challenges that will determine your fate, but how you respond to them.

You can’t always choose the challenge or adversity, but you can always choose the manner in which you will deal with it. The choices you make at this time will ultimately determine who you are today, and who you will become tomorrow. Dr Norman Vincent Peale noted that the only people who don’t have problems are dead! So think about it this way… if you have problems, at least you know you’re alive!

Just about every one of us is living with stress in our lives.

Chronic stress is a major problem in our lives. It can lead to all sorts of issues from sleep disorders, to heart attacks, to cancer.

From a biological point of view, stress was once a good thing – designed to keep you alive in times of danger. The body’s flight or fight modes kicked in to stop routine maintenance and repair so that all your faculties could be brought to bear on keeping you alive. There’s no point in digesting your food if you’re just about to become a sabre tooth tiger’s lunch!

The issue today is that stress has become chronic and endemic as opposed to acute. Rather than just being stressed in times of actual physical danger, people can be in a constant state of stress, which can eventually lead to some of the medical issues mentioned above.

So, if being alive means that you will have challenges and stress, how can you go about formulating strategies that will enable you to deal with them as they occur?

Building a solid foundation is one of the keys to achieving your goals and dreams in life.

Most of you will have heard the parable of the builder who built his house on sand, as opposed to the one who built on rock. The original story originated in ancient Palestine where it was quite normal for great rivers to completely dry up in summer. Builders who didn’t want to work hard to dig foundations for their homes dug in the softer mud of the dry river bed. More experienced builders dug footings in the rock, well away from the water course. Of course this was significantly harder work in the days when there were no bulldozers! Which house do you think stayed standing when the rains came and the river came back to life?

The parable highlights five universal principles we can all learn from:

Principle 1: Adversity comes to all

Shit happens! Get used to it! The bigger your dream, the greater the obstacles life will throw your way.

There is a story about a farmer who planted maple trees around his paddock so that he wouldn’t have to set fence posts. The farmer then ran barbed wire from one tree to the next. Years later, looking at the trees demonstrated how each had responded to the barbed wire wrapped around their sensitive skin. Some trees had incorporated the wire into their trunks, and grown tall, strong and upright, in spite of the wire. Others had never adjusted to the wire and grown twisted and deformed.

People are just like those maples. Some people when facing adversity, will adjust by incorporating it into their lives, continue on and grow tall and triumphant. Other people will allow the difficulties to twist, distort and ruin their lives. Just like the trees, it’s your choice how you face difficulty and overcome it.

Failing your way to success

In my book, there is no such thing as failure – just another learning. Some of our best learning comes from having “failed” at something. Success is simply getting up one more time than you have fallen down. Edison found over ten thousand ways not to design a light bulb before succeeding.

Principle 2: The easy path may not be the best path

Taking the easy way out in the short term may not be productive in the long run. Think of the builder on sand verses the one on rock. There is a saying that “the short cut may well turn out to be the long cut in the end.” How many times have you thought that by taking the back roads to avoid the traffic you’d get there faster, only to discover the myriad of speed humps littering the road?

Principle 3: Create a vision for your life

What’s the old saying? “Without vision, the people will perish.”

If you don’t have a vision for your life, aren’t you like the builder who dug his foundations in sand? He didn’t see past the next few months to when the rain would come, as it inevitably would.

Having a vision enables you to see the world not for what it is – but for what it can become! A vision enables you to see yourself for not who you are – but for who you can become.

Having a vision lets you soar like an eagle, rather than fossick for food like a chicken. A vision will give you a sense of purpose and provide direction in your life. Nothing great was ever achieved without vision.

Principle 4: Use your mind and learn from others

It’s often far easier and less painful to learn from other peoples’ experience. Keep your wits about you so that you don’t fall into obvious traps. Seek counsel from a mentor or coach.

Principle 5: Take action

Having a vision for your life, getting counsel etc., makes no difference if you don’t get into action. Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words.

There is a story about a new arrival to the USA who went into a cafeteria after coming through immigration. He took a seat and waited for someone to serve him. Being a self service establishment, of course no one did. Finally, a kind stranger told the immigrant how things worked.

“Start at the end of the line, then get yourself a tray and select what ever you want as you go down the line. At the end, they will tell you how much you have to pay.”

Years later, the immigrant told his grandson this story. “Life is like a cafeteria. You can get anything you want if you are willing to pay the price. You can even have success itself. But you won’t get it if you expect someone to bring it to you. You have to get up and get it for yourself.”

How many of you expect success to come to you on a plate? You have to work for it, and everything has a price. Sometimes the price is worth it, sometimes not. You have to decide. Unfortunately, the price isn’t always obvious when you start.

Act now, not later!

I’ll conclude with a final story about J. G. Roscoe. Roscoe wanted to build the tallest sky scraper in NY city. In 1929, just before the crash that ushered in the Great Depression, Roscoe cashed in all his stocks so that he could invest in his project. He also convinced a number of other people to do likewise.

A year later, he started building the Empire State Building! If Roscoe had waited to act on his dream, he would have failed as his stocks would probably have been worthless.

What action can you take today to see your vision and dreams come into reality?

Do you have a vision for you life? Do have realistic goals which are written down? Do you have a strategy to get from where you are now to where you envision yourself to be?

If you would like help to either define your vision, or shape an existing one, give me a call and we can discuss it.