Change is Hard

This is a follow on from Chapter 1 – Who am I and what am I doing here? 

Any decision to leave what you know is hard. It's scary. There’s a feeling of loss. These are natural feelings and it’s the fear of those things that often keeps people in situations they no longer want to be in. Sometimes these situations are serious, like abusive relationships. The workplace can also be a suboptimal situation, hopefully never in the realm of physical abuse, but most certainly mentally impactful scenarios are very, very real. 

So, as I was thinking through what I wanted to be when I grew up, I had these feelings of fear of “losing” something. Fear of making a wrong decision. Fear of getting it wrong. Especially in companies where there are significant positive aspects and an abundance of resources available, it’s so easy to lapse into The Comfort Zone, soak comfortably in the warm waters and not want to run any risk of getting out and finding the air is cold. 

And breaking that thinking takes one of two things: a strong mental game where you realize what’s happening and actively make the decision, or an event that triggers the awakening.  

The feeling of loss passes, just like processing grief. And we should be honest here, leaving a long-term employer is very much a process of grieving, just for experiences and not for a person. I found myself initially having to actively detach from the old world, breaking habits like reading related news, participating actively in that old world. I have no desire to forget it, or even remove myself from it. But it needed to become an active choice to participate rather than an active choice not to. 

These behaviors change, the feeling of loss passes, it reduces and then one day you realize you don’t miss it anymore. Last week, I hit this milestone, just over 3 months after leaving. 3 months. Is that fast or slow? I don’t know. It feels both as the proximity and recency bias suggests it was slow, but the experience suggests it was fast. 

And then you jump into your new world and inevitably wonder “what have I done”. I have yet to start a new job, either from external or as an internal shift, and not have that moment where buyer's remorse and doubt creep in and you have the moment where your brain whispers to you “If I’d known this …". If those feelings persist, then maybe you did make a mistake. It happens. I’ve made bad decisions, taken the wrong job for the wrong reasons and not realized until after. But more often than not, a deep breath, an acceptance to live in the grey, wallow in the unknown and be comfortable being uncomfortable will stand you well and see you emerge from the chrysalis as the butterfly you intended. 

The element I found most difficult was the change in humans. Long term employment leads to a strong network and awareness of names and roles, where to go for things, who can really get things done and who holds a nice title but no ability to actually be helpful. A new environment lacks these things. Names mean nothing, org charts are foreign, and it takes time and multiple interactions to build trust and establish a rapport. Pandemic remote working only makes this harder, one of the areas that in-person really does make a difference is in the early stages of building a relationship and trust.  

I have no secrets to success here, I went into this with an open mind, a willingness to learn, to ask the basic questions, to leverage my lack of knowledge as a strength and to be flexible and fluid in my operating model.  

Because after the change, we have uncertainty.