3 Tips to Spring Forward into Change
Mar 10, 2024
The sun was getting up and it was light when the alarm woke me up. I like that.
That was Standard Time.
This morning, the alarm went off and it was dark. I don’t like that.
Welcome to Daylight Savings Time.
Sure, I’ll enjoy an extra hour of sunlight this evening. That didn’t help any this morning.
Somebody moved my time.
Almost makes me want to move to Hawaii or Arizona.
Somebody is always moving something, especially at work.
So how do you keep up?
Here are 3 tips to help you spring forward into a culture of adapting to change at work:
Remind yourself: Change happens.
Of course, this isn’t my first change to Daylight Savings Time. They move my time every year. Sometimes they change when they move my time. Kind of a double change…
Your work has changed whether you’ve worked a couple of years or a couple of decades. Some of the change was cyclical and you anticipated it. Other change was unpredictable, perhaps blind-sided you. You worked in the dar.
Change happens.
Your brain craves the familiar. Your mind seeks patterns you recognize. You want to work in predictable ways that create the results you want every time.
If such a time did exist, it’s gone forever now.
Remind yourself daily that change happens...to everyone, everywhere.
Remember a previous change experience you survived
I can remember a previous time that I survived since this isn’t my first change to Daylight Savings Time. I can recall working in my rose garden in that extra hour of daylight. Or, trail riding our horses with my wife, enjoying a beautiful, hour-delayed sunset.
You can remember a previous time at work when change intruded on work as usual, plunging you into temporary darkness. Your vendor changed price structuring. The bank changed credit terms. A key teammate left to change jobs. You preferred the light; your previous way of working.
However, you discovered a way to survive the change. You adapted successfully. You found a way to make the new become familiar—through repetition, the same way you learned your multiplication tables in third grade. You just kept going until you did it.
Remember that time of change. Sit down and soak in the success of that experience. You survived it, perhaps now thrive because of it.
And you will this time as well.
Relax and focus on your positive strengths
Yes, somebody moved my time, but there remain some constants in the change.
I can deal with the changing time. I can relax and call on my time-adapting skills and embrace the change.
Your work culture strengths are still yours. What you do well may take on different expressions in a changing environment, but you have strengths that are still viable and necessary at work.
Relax into those strengths.
Now that you remember change happens, and recall a previous, successful experience with it, release the anxiety and relax enough to do what you do well at work.
The time may change, but the clock continues to work.
And so will you.
Spring forward into change as you create a positive work culture today that grows people and profits.
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