I have been rethinking about how we really change our lives as people. Because learning is so important to me, I must also believe in change.
Yet the reality of change is often one of struggle and uncertainty and results you cannot see in advance.
I was thinking about change related to employees at first. Managers see people's patterns that get repeated - the ones you cherish and rely on, plus the ones that make you worry a little. It's always a question about how and if to try to intervene or to help someone grow.
I know personally that I can be stuck in the past, struggling to take the first - seemingly enormous - step in a new direction. Sometimes I needed a long time to let go of old ideas when they were not working. It's hard to admit that you will never win in a situation. That you must leave the situation instead. It's really hard.
And then I unexpectedly saw my old boss walking down the street. The one who would rank several places lower than the "next worst" of my two dozen bosses. A notoriously bad boss who gives the story of my professional history color and stronger lessons learned.
Thing was, he had not changed. After more than 5 years, he looked the same, walked the same, was heading in the direction of what I imagine to be his same "old haunt" for dinner meetings. I guess he might even have the same ambition for which I once thought he would "sell his own mother." But of course, I don't know that because I didn't speak to him directly.
What I did instead was walk along beside him for a few minutes. Right beside him. He didn't recognize me. That's because I have changed. Not just in how I look, but in what I do. I was not in a power suit headed for a meeting. Or racing along with stress written on my face because some guy like him had given me impossible deadlines and expected me to jump on a plane to fly halfway around the world again on Tuesday for a meeting in which we would write a strategy aimed ultimately more to help build his career than to grow the business.
I was in tennis shoes, carrying a gym bag.
But you know what? It took me more than five years to be able to just walk beside him in silence. Before that, I took two big leaps into large, black unknown holes. I let go of my "big successful career" to seek a "successful way of living." Then there were lots of little steps forwards and backwards. Changes that took energy, felt really uncomfortable and uncertain if they would work. Fortunately, the little "successes" (and obvious return of my health and creativity) kept me on track.
As a still new small business owner, the changes are not finished. But I, for one, am walking down a different street than 5 years earlier. Last week, those steps felt both hard-earned and worth it.
