Embrace Change

My lovely Oregon town sits on lava from Newberry Volcano, while the west end of town is material that's come from the high Cascades mountains.

All is quiet and peaceful this morning. The last eruption at Newberry happened 1,300 years ago. Will it be the last? Nope.

In Iceland, the volcano Fagradalsfjall erupted on the evening of March 19, 2021, when an eruptive fissure opened in the Geldingadalir valleys. That's where I assumed the above photo was captured, which shows lava that will eventually be hard as a rock behaving like a wave off the coast of Hawaii.

The Earth constantly changes. You and I constantly change. So does our society, companies and relationships.

Over the weekend, I took a hike to a nearby set of waterfalls. A helpful sign revealed that in the Ice Age 20,000 years ago, the spot on which we were standing was buried by 900 feet of ice.

Change, change and more change.

We like to resist change. It's shocking when cliffs collapse and houses fall into the sea, but cliffs collapse all the time; the only shocking thing is that people still build houses on them.

When we prepare for change, it is no longer shocking. Surfers aren't shocked when flat water gives way to a massive wave; it's the whole reason they got out of bed that morning.

In a similar manner, when you use change to your advantage, it makes life dramatically easier and more enjoyable. When I was first learning to windsurf, I once struggled to carry my sail from a park lawn to the edge of the water; the wind was pushing me all around. Then a friend showed me how to carry the sail over my head, using the energy of the wind to make the sail almost weightless.

Use change to your advantage. Don't fear it. Embrace it.

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Bruce Kasanoff is a ghostwriter for entrepreneurs and executives. Learn more at?Kasanoff.com. He is the author of?How to Self-Promote without Being a Jerk.