How to Cope with Change and Come out Stronger

There’s not a single one of us that hasn’t been affected by change in the last year or so. And for a species that craves security and certainty, it has been devastating. Many of us might look back and consider this period as the most turbulent in our lives, and perhaps, the worst.

For better or worse, however, change is what ultimately connects our experiences through life. We celebrate it; in our marriages and births, our promotions and victories. But we also fear it. Our divorces, deaths, our redundancies and failures. It’s our leaps into the unknown - the graduations, relocations, the endless choices of this way or that. Whether it’s big or small, change sends reverberations down our personal timeline and presents new emotions, new opportunities, and new challenges to overcome.

Learning to cope with this constant ebb and flow of is one of the most powerful things we can do as a community. In this article, I’m going to try and scratch the surface of these techniques - taking from experts in psychology, business, sport and health - to give you four ways to cope with some of those changes in your life. With many of us being forced into unwanted change at the moment, especially in our careers, I hope this helps you re-frame, re-energise and move forward with joy.

Taken from Jeremy Snape's Apple Top 10 podcast 'Inside the Mind of Champions'

1. Avoid victimhood

I’d like to start with a really decisive way to think about change - which is based on avoiding victimhood, and seeing change as opportunity.

This is easier said than done, but there’s an absolutely brilliant ‘reframing’ technique that I learned from international business advisor and bestselling author, Campbell McPherson. He spoke about the victim triangle, which was originally theorised as the drama triangle by Dr. Steven Karpman back in the 60s. I’m going to put the full quote here, because I think it’s extremely useful in starting to tackle our fear of change:

“This victim triangle...it’s a triangle where you've got the three spots: one is the victim, the other is the persecutor. And one is the rescuer.

Award winning author Campbell McPherson shares his insights with Sporting Edge

Every victim finds a persecutor, and then inevitably finds a rescuer - or a rescuer will ride to the rescue of the victim. So the persecutor could be real or could be imagined, but the rescuer always tends to turn up. The rescuer is really interesting in that it's a person that looks as though they're trying to help the victim, but they're not, they're trying to keep the victim down as a victim. And we've all seen rescuers before; they'll put their arm around them, make them a nice cup of tea and say, oh, you poor thing, you're being persecuted. But they keep them in victim mode subconsciously. The way out of that is for the victim to start to take control. For the victim, to reframe the entire situation and to realise that they're actually a creator.

So rather than being a victim of circumstance, they're a creator of opportunities. For them to do that, they need to see a persecutor, not as a persecutor, but as a challenger. Isn't this interesting? It's about standing back and being objective with what's happening, and not being part of it. So the persecutor is actually someone who is coming up with these challenges that I need to overcome. And as a creator, I can create solutions to those challenges. There is no place for a rescuer. You need to get rid of your rescuer and replace them with a coach, someone who will help you be a creator and help you see the challenges as being constructive and help you to move on. That's the best way to escape a victim triangle.”

Isn’t that a refreshing way of looking at things? You are not a victim of circumstance, but a creator of new options. While you might be grateful in the short term for your ‘rescuers’, the people comforting you, at some point you need to take a step away from the comfort blanket and rise to the challenges set by the ‘challenger’. How many people that have set up their own business or moved roles say they wish they'd done it earlier - here is your chance....

2. Control the controllables

So now that you see yourself as this creator, rather than a victim, how exactly do you go about creating? Or a simpler way to put it; how are you going to spend your energy? From a sport psychology perspective there’s some age-old advice that is always relevant: control the controllables.

These circles represent all the things that happen in our lives. In the inner ring, there’s everything we have control over. The middle ring contains things we have influence on, but do not directly control. And the outer ring is full of all the things we have no control or influence over at all.

When change comes, people tend to feel insecure and vent about the things that are completely out of their control and influence. So that outer ring is where all of our energy goes. It could be disagreeing with the strategy of the business, or maybe our competitors have launched a product that's affecting us. Or maybe there's a political issue – the government lockdown policy is a prominent recent example.

All of those are out of our control, yet ironically, that's where we put most of our time and effort as our brain fixates on the threat. The advice from the psychologists is this: shift that energy into the middle and inner rings. The middle ‘influence’ ring might include the way you prepare your team. Or the way you work with your peers across your network to start influencing their thinking. And then the centre ring is, of course, is where you should try and maximise your time. That's your mindset, your energy, your planning, your mood, your communication and your work.

The 70/20/10 principle encourages you to be mindful of where you’re directing your energy and what you’re worrying about. 70% in the inner ring, 20% in the middle ring and 10% in the outer ring is a healthy place to start. Do this, and you’ll be much more productive in moving forward through change and doing so on your terms. If you do that, as well as this next step, you’ll be primed and ready to tackle difficult changes in circumstance...

3. Look back then forward

I started off this article by listing lots of the changes we tend to encounter throughout life - and I’m sure many of you have had to deal with them. From leaving school to switching jobs, to relocating in new cities - change has happened before, and you’ve come out the other side more experienced and more confident. In our interview with Amy Williams, former Olympic gold medal skeleton racer, she spoke about a similar idea, and told us a really pertinent story about how she coped with crushing change in her career:

“It was actually a year and a half, just under two years, that I had a knee operation before the Olympics. And suddenly there I was on crutches, not being able to move, not being able to train. All the other girls were around me were in full training and it's a hard thing to cope with when you’re still alongside them in the gym, but you can't even walk up and down the stairs.

But yet, you get through it. With the help of all the goal setting and your coach being supportive, you get through it, and then suddenly, you're back to being in full fitness.

Then the season before the Olympics I had another injury, a terrible crash on the track. Straight away you think, I'm not going to get through it. Everyone else is going to move on. But you do. You just have to think backwards. Hang on, I’ve been here before and I popped out the other end fine. Just as strong. And that gives you the confidence to know that you can get through it.

Winter Olympic Gold Medallist Amy Williams MBE shares her strategies.

It's the same as in your work. You change positions in a job, or you change jobs completely and it’s daunting and scary. How am I going to do this? But just going back a few steps, whether it's a year, two years, last month or longer, you've had similar situations.

You need to use that as confidence to know that you can get through it. You did it before, there’s a certain process, and you’ll get through it again. And you'll probably be an even stronger person than you were the first time.”

She's talking here about the things that we can't see, which is the growth, the character, the increased resilience that we get on the other side of the change episode. So certainly when we're stuck in that pit, we can look back into our timeline and find examples in the past. This is not just positive thinking, this is your bank account of confidence that's been built over a period of time. And it should help you tackle this new challenge with belief and optimism.

4. You are more than your profession

For the final point, I’d like to dial in on the specific issue of change in the workplace - because I know it will be relevant to a lot of people right now feeling the aftershocks of the pandemic.

A major challenge for many of us, whether you're a sportsperson or businessperson or anything, is that so much of who we are is taken up by what we do for a living. When you go to a dinner party and meet new people, the first question might be, oh, what's your name? But it's followed up incredibly quickly by, what do you do?

Everybody wants to know what you do. What's your rank, what's your status? Which is why being unemployed can sometimes feel like a confession. But considering most people will probably have between six and twelve jobs in our career, it's actually a normal thing to be in this transitional period between roles. There’s no shame, they could be a gift.

These periods could be a much-needed opportunity to think differently about things. Necessity is a great innovator and we rarely take the time to step back unless we are forced to by circumstance. So maybe we want to work in a different career, or take some time out and learn some new skills, or have a lifestyle shift altogether. There’s an opportunity here to be that creator, to redesign your future from a new starting point with no guilt or restriction.

The challenge is that we all want to be respected. We all want to be significant. And the only place we show our value or have our value measured is in our profession. If we think about it, it's our bonus, our salary, our title, our status. But by contrast, we don't get measured as a father, a friend, a mother, somebody who works in a charity, because that's just not quantifiable. But it’s absolutely just as valuable - if not more so.

I have an exercise I often do with senior leaders in workshops or coaching - which really emphasises this and helps to look at it differently. I get them to draw a big pie chart on a piece of paper, and then segment it based on what they think makes up their personal identity. For a lot of people, about 80 percent of the circle is taken up by their job, and the 20 percent that remains is divided into slithers representing them as a friend, a father, a brother, an charity supporter, and everything else.

So this can leave us both obsessed and vulnerable. If the Grim Reaper comes along with a shift in company strategy and a decrease in headcount, then there might only be 20 percent of you left. We need to consider this like having a diversified financial portfolio – spreading the risk in case some investments fail.

During my career as a professional cricketer, going through a bad run of form was a real challenge – I felt worthless to the team. I decided that when I wasn’t contributing in terms of runs and wickets, I would try to give value in another role as a mentor to the young players. And if I spent a couple of hours working with one of the youngsters, then that felt like it had been a more worthwhile day. So again, don't just see your identity as being fully based on your job, because some factors are out of your control and we need to focus on our mindset, our behaviour and helping others.

So these are some new ways to help you cope with the turbulence around you. You’ll notice that a lot of it is about shifting your mentality and looking at your circumstances from a different perspective. Imagine 3 years from now - it's March 2024 - you've just won an award for your new business or venture and you're telling your story. As you grip your trophy tightly, Covid isn't the villain any more, its your saviour and your story gathers energy and momentum with every sentence. You are glowing with pride at your transformation because you know where this story 'started'.

While many of us are bogged down in the mechanics of our lives and our careers right now, we often ignore the most important catalyst of our happiness and success - our mindset.

Good luck.

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