Paralysed by Fear, My Relationship with Change

A few weeks ago I saw a chart posted on LinkedIn, and adapted the image as depicted above, the original sparked some internal reflection on how I have dealt with change over the years, and why people are so resistant to it.

Up until the past few years, I often found myself paralysed with fear when faced with any significant change. The uneasy feeling one gets when forced to go outside of a comfort zone used to dramatically affect me, but is now where I find myself most comfortable. It took a long time to realise that in today's age, and due mostly to rapid technological advances, change is the only constant, and that embracing or accepting this reality is the best thing anyone can do to thrive as opposed to wither.

I spent the first 14 years of my life in Connecticut, USA, living a very comfortable life, largely unchanged, until I decided to follow in my father's footsteps off to boarding school in Maine, where I was paralysed with fear and sadness because I was facing into something wholly unknown. Four months after getting acclimated to my new comfort zone, I was told that my whole family was packing up and moving to Tokyo, Japan. Not surprising, the fear crept right back in, this time lasting the better part of six months, until, again, I found myself acclimatised, this time to an extremely foreign situation.

Although not obvious at first, I grew, profoundly, having spent three years in Japan. My world view was wildly broadened, much more than my peers at home, at the time. I also 'grew up' faster than normal - Gaijin, as the Japanese called us, stuck together, regardless of age, gender or race, and so I socialised with a large range of people in high school, all the way up to colleagues of my parents. If you've seen the film Lost in Translation you would get a sense of this, with two unlikely characters in Murray and Johansen creating such a tight bond. This isn't a piece about my Japan experience, but looking back, I will say this was an amazing period of my life.

The next seven years brought a whirlwind of change: moving to multiple cities across the USA to finish high school and attend university, followed by a few 'first' jobs in my chosen industry (hospitality) at the time. We then decided to move to Australia and embark on a new career direction in technology where I experienced the steepest learning curve of my life, and once again, vast changes; new country, growing family, new career, new market, new friends, new colleagues, new everything!

Going from the hospitality industry into the tech sector never had me feel more like a fish out of water, even in comparison to when I first landed in Japan! It should go without saying, I had a lot of anxiety, for about a year, until I began to feel like I knew what I was doing and became successful in my role.

Fast forward to now, where I am an Account Director at Salesforce, a company that has received many accolades in recent times for being, "The world's most innovative company," by Forbes, and has won "Best Place to Work in the World" by Great Places to Work. Salesforce is not only in lock step with the current rate of change, but is often driving some of it. There is no time for rest at Salesforce, the rate of change is constant, the company is busy releasing features and products three times a year, and at the same time acquiring companies. It is the perfect place to be because it forces me to live between the learning and growth zones depicted above, never allowing me to slip back into the darkness of the comfort zone.

The change in tech over the past seven years has been relentless in comparison to the previous twenty. Cloud computing was just coming onto the scene five or six years ago in Australia, and only the most forward thinkers were getting involved - putting things in further context, Blackberry was the dominant mobile device found in every enterprise, iPhone and Android were purely consumer focused platforms, where the biggest app at the time was Angry Birds.

It is undeniable that things look very different today in comparison to just a few years ago, some might call this period the Fourth Industrial Revolution, defined by the World Economic Forum, "The Fourth Industrial Revolution represents a fundamental change in the way we live, work and relate to one another. It is a new chapter in human development, enabled by extraordinary technology advances commensurate with those of the first, second and third industrial revolutions. These advances are merging the physical, digital and biological worlds in ways that create both huge promise and potential peril. The speed, breadth and depth of this revolution is forcing us to rethink how countries develop, how organisations create value and even what it means to be human. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is about more than just technology-driven change; it is an opportunity to help everyone, including leaders, policy-makers and people from all income groups and nations, to harness converging technologies in order to create an inclusive, human-centred future. The real opportunity is to look beyond technology, and find ways to give the greatest number of people the ability to positively impact their families, organisations and communities" (WEF https://www.weforum.org/focus/fourth-industrial-revolution).

The notion that change is inevitable is not a new one. In 500 B.C. Heraclitus of Ephesus said, "Life is Flux...The way up and the way down are one and the same. Living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old, are the same.” These things are the 'same' in that they are all subject to change, arise from one change to vanish into another and all things, constantly, are in flux and are, in that regard, the same" (Joshua J Mark, https://www.ancient.eu/Heraclitus_of_Ephesos/).

Given where the world is today in terms of the pace of change, and that the idea of change being the only constant in life is centuries old knowledge, why is it that so many people and organisations are still SO resistant to change? I believe it comes from being too comfortable for too long, much like evolution, there is no growth if external pressures aren't forcing the adaptation, and it is really difficult to get out of the comfort zone when you've been in there for so long.

And so, I have grown to learn, and accept, that change is a good thing. In the early days I too was terrified by it, but now am incredibly thankful for my experiences which have helped me continue to maintain relevance and personal reinvention. As a friend's father used to say, "if your not busy growing, you are busy dying." Fact, nothing good comes from staying in the comfort zone, and so I vow to always live in the learning and growth zones!