When the alarm clock radio has awakened me for the past few weeks, the sun was getting up and it was light. I like that.
This morning, it went off and the sun was still asleep and it was dark. I don’t like that.
Welcome to the first workday of Daylight Savings Time.
Sure, I’ll enjoy an extra hour of sunlight this evening. But that didn’t help any this morning.
Somebody moved my time.
Seems like somebody is always moving something, aren’t they? Especially in business…
Since everything is changing so rapidly, how do you keep up?
Here are 3 tips to help you positively spring forward at work:
Remind yourself: Change happens.
Of course this isn’t my first change to Daylight Savings Time. They move my time every year. In fact, they recently changed when they move my time. Kind of a double change…
Whether you’ve been in business a couple of years or a couple of decades, your business has experienced change. Some of the change was cyclical and you anticipated it. Other change was unpredictable, perhaps blind-sided you. You worked in the darkness.
Change happens.
Sure, our brains crave the familiar. Our minds seek out patterns we recognize. We want to do business in predictable, anticipated ways that create the results we want every time.
If such a time did exist, it’s gone forever.
Remind yourself daily that change happens…to everyone, everywhere.
Remember a previous change experience you survived
Since this isn’t my first change to Daylight Savings Time, I can remember a previous time that I survived. 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 your familiar-driven business, plunging you into temporary darkness. Your vendor changed price structuring. The bank changed credit terms. Your key employee left you to change jobs. You preferred the light, i.e., your previous way of doing your work.
However, you discovered a way to survive the change. You adapted successfully. In fact, 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 one as well.
Relax and focus on your positive strengths
Yes, somebody moved my time, but there remain some constants in the change. I still have a vast reserve of positive strengths to call on in dealing with the changing time. I can relax and call on my time-adapting skills and embrace the change.
Your Work Positive strengths are still yours. What you do well may take on various expressions in a changing environment, but you have strengths that are still viable and necessary to your business.
Relax into your strengths. Now that you are reminded of the endemic nature of change, and remember a previous, successful experience with it, release the anxiety that often accompanies change and relax enough to do what you do well in your business.
The time may change, but the clock continues to work.
And so will you.
Positively spring forward as you Work Positive today.
