Well it’s back to school week and many parents will be seeing their young children starting high school for the first time. For some it will be filled with stress, fear and trepidation and for others it will be an exciting start full of new possibilities and ideas and that’s just the parents. The underlying factor running through the next few weeks is that so many people will be experiencing what change really feels like and it is so easy to dwell on the uncomfortable side of change that it sometimes brings with it.
So stop a moment and do this little creative exercise, fold your arms in a comfortable position, tucking one into the other like you might do to keep warm. Take on board what it feels like for a few moments and then unfold them and fold them back together but this time the opposite way, so if you folded your right arm over your left arm then change it to left over right. When you first do it, it will feel awkward and a little bit strange and you’ll be tempted to just change back because it’s more comfortable. The mind likes familiarity, it wants the comfortable feeling we got the first time around.
It’s a good tip if you have kids to introduce them to this simple creative exercise because it helps the mind to make sense of the strange feeling you have when you are faced with change and can remind you to recognise what it really is. It only takes around 21 days for the mind to accept this change and within 3 weeks you could be just as comfortable with your arms folded left over right as you are the other way. This knowledge can help them to understand change.
One of the most uncomfortable business functions that many business people hate to do is cold calling, telephoning prospective clients and engaging in conversation to start a business relationship with them. The gap between Familiarity and Change can be bridged with Discomfort and this is the awkwardness we feel when we have to step out of complacency to reach new clients. We find many ‘What if’ scenarios racing through our mind giving us good reasons not to make a call, what if they reject us, what if they don’t like what we do. The mind can find a hundred good reasons not to do something much easier than doing it.
So my tip for September which to me is the month of change is do something that sparks you out of that familiarity zone, telephone that potential client up and suggest a meeting with them. If they say yes, enjoy the success, if they say no then phone another one until you get a yes.
So get disturbing the comfortable and when you do achieve success treat yourself to a reward to comfort the disturbance.
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