Big wins?YES!

My posts recently have been focused on mindset, and change, and how to work through that process through difficulties in order to achieve a dream. I wrote about how we all attend to opportunities and difficulties in different ways, with different mindsets, and how it is in our human nature to revert to fight or flight when we sense change is coming. 

In my past work, we spoke of how people don't fear change, people feel loss. There is so much truth to that statement, and in fact it tends to be why when we feel challenged by change we have to make "in the moment" decisions as to whether we will take a risk, take on the change and move towards fulfilling the vision or dream that we have for future,or revert back to what is safe and comfortable and status quo.

We know that in order to awaken a sustainable impact, we must first have vision, from that vision we must then focus on what our mindset is around that vision, and then we must decide if we are willing to fight through the fear of loss to gain the reward of the change, or take flight and run back to what is comfortable and status quo.

The saying, "With risk comes great reward" has been around for hundreds of years, however I don't believe that many people actually believe that. I believe if we were to look into the research around change agency we would find that it is actually a small number of people who lead lives that act on their belief of that statement, but yet we throw it around as if it's common understanding, belief and action.

My post yesterday mentioned the frustration that comes when we have made the decision to fight through the fear of loss that comes with change, and then reach the point where not a lot of change is actually happening. I spoke of the reality during this time in which we feel isolated in the work that we are doing, but yet we know it is only for a short time.  This to me is always the most critical period, because it is in the slow part, before things move fast, that we have time to consider giving up and returning to the comfort and familiar and safe places that we are used to.  It is in this time that we have to make a conscious choice to stay the course, to invest in building the stakeholders around us so that we are no longer alone, and be willing to sit through the discomfort of that process knowing that in the end we will have a sustainable team to navigate the implementation process from beginning to end.

So today, I made the decision to step out of my place of comfort, present a vision to new stakeholders and see what happens. With wonderful, yet courageous conversations our outcome was a new team, a more refined purpose, and a deeper vision for implementation.  At the end of the meeting a colleague said to me, "Kristin, yesterday I was ready to give up and look for another job.  Today, I am excited, and I have hope and I see future in this."  My response was simply, "Me too!...to all of it!"

See, anytime we have a vision, we have something that we want to risk and try and do, we must work through this process. Nothing comes without the bumps, and hurdles, and moments of feeling overwhelmed, and wanting to give up, but we must stop, take a moment to reflect and process how we will proceed, and if we choose to stay the course we must pick ourselves up, gather our courage, take risks, and celebrate every little win along the way knowing that we are now one step closer to the intended outcome. Not only are we closer, but hopefully we are closer with a team of partners in the process.


So I hope this post today encourages you. It's okay to fear change, to fear loss, but it's what we do with it that determines our course. If we allow the fear of loss to bring us back to what is comfortable then we lose out on the opportunities to run, not walk, but run into awakening impact in education, and across all areas of our lives. Don't let fear hold you back, take a step at a time, build partners in the process, and together build sustainable capacity around a new vision, innovation, and change!:)