Change is hard. People resist change. Or so they say.
But if you won $10M in the lottery tomorrow, you probably wouldn’t resist that.
We don’t resist change. We resist loss. Because loss is painful. It registers in the brain the same way physical pain does.
Change is something external that happens to us, and transition is the internal process we go through to adapt to the change.
Lewin’s famous change model is unfreeze, change, refreeze. If you think about that from a chemistry perspective, the molecules go from being orderly and cohesive when frozen to disordered and kind of frantic when unfrozen. But it is a necessary step in the process to refreeze into a new shape.
On the inside, we transition. Bridges famous model of transition is first to have an ending, then a neutral zone, and finally a new beginning. This means we have to say goodbye to the reality that we knew, and live in a bit of a neutral zone, or limbo, while we wait for the new beginning.
Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we respond to it. And after a short period of time, whatever we feel is a choice we make. The most confident and self-assured amongst us are agile and resilient to change. What’s their secret? Framing. The way you frame any situation (your thoughts) directly affect your feelings. So, what do you see in the face of change? Danger? Or opportunity?
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