Choose Your Response – Adaptability, Endurance & Learning
Because of my work as a career transition coach/consultant, I’m pretty much steeped my clients’ concern over the economy, fear about the job market and worries about changing work trends. I know that at the bottom of most of these feelings is the overwhelming sense of having no control over the outcome. What they do in D.C., Wall Street and around the globe is not something most of us can control. But there is something we can control… we can choose and, therefore, control our responses to these and other challenging circumstances.
Choosing the response of adaptability is extremely important when you’re in a state of uncertainty. It’s important to dig deep to find that emotional resiliency that lies within and create innovative strategies to move forward. It is said that adaptability is the key to surviving and thriving during changes in the environment. The universe (and all that it contains) is always in constant motion, so you might as well chose to adapt.
Another response I recommend choosing is endurance. As I tell job seekers and career shifters… stay the course for the learning process. Even if it seems like the course taken is simply another dead end, and even it seems as though a great deal of work/time has been wasted, you’ll gain something because at least you learn what doesn’t work and what does! In other words, everything happens for a reason, even if you don’t know what the reason is at the time it’s happening.
Speaking of learning, specifically choosing the response of learning is my number one way of dealing with the negative stuff when it comes up. My philosophy is that when bad things happen, there must be something in it to learn from or apply to the rest of my life’s journey. Call it a spiritual outlook if you will, but that’s what keeps me going.
I have learned that in choosing my response to people and circumstances, I can choose to be positive rather than negative. What about you? Will you walk around waiting for the sky to fall, or will you take some control over your life by controlling your responses to the changes and the challenges? I know from experience that when you take control of your responses, you take control of at least one outcome… whether you’re going to have a smile on your face or worry lines on your forehead!
