Responding to Change

I did Round 7 of the Splash and Dash series this week - a short ocean swim followed by a short run.

I was happy to complete it, and happy with my overall time, but when I looked at the individual results, I noticed I had spent 2:01 in the transition zone - the time getting out of the wetsuit and putting running shoes on. Compare this with the person that finished 48 seconds ahead of me. He only spent 26 seconds in the transition zone and finished 6 places faster in the overall rankings. Out of only 50 people doing that distance, 6 places higher in the rankings was substantial.

In fact, pretty much every one of the 6 people that finished immediately ahead of me blitzed the transition time.

Aside from thinking about how I can shave off time during transition in a future series event, it got me thinking: how quickly do I respond to change in other areas of my life?

Being aware of how we respond to change doesn’t need to just apply to big things in life - such as the loss of a loved one, or a forced change in your career.

It can be applied to small things too. In fact, it can apply to basically anything that happens in our lives.

Anything that happens that hurts you or makes you instinctively want to respond in a negative way is an opportunity to practise getting better at responding to change and improve your time in the ‘transition zone’.

It might be that you receive feedback that is hurtful, or you might become aware that something you’ve done or how you have behaved was hurtful to someone else, or you might be impacted by something out of your control that you feel is unjust or unnecessary.

So much time can be spent (dare I say, wasted) in the transition zone - time spent faffing around being juvenile, offended, hurt, indignant, anxious, angry or depressed. Oftentimes the most powerful tonic is to seize the opportunity to learn and change, and to do the next logical thing that is outside of your comfort zone. If you get feedback, this might involve swallowing a bucketload of your personal pride, thanking the person for the feedback, and working with them maturely. If you are ill or feel physically drained all the time, it might involve a drastic lifestyle change. If your role at work changes substantially due to a restructure, you might apply yourself to learning a new skill or craft. If someone offends or triggers you, it might involve snapping out of a salty sulk within minutes or seconds and just having a mature conversation.

My default method of learning seems to be ‘the hard way’ - that is, I am learning the hard way that spending excessive time wallowing in the ‘transition zone’ when change happens in my life is unproductive and a waste of time.

The key message I want to convey is that even if we have performed miserably in the transition zone up until now, we can get better! We can learn to cut back the juvenile emotions that overcome us when something challenges or vexes us - or at the very least, stop acting on those juvenile emotions.

This short poem resonates with me:

You are not defined by this moment in time, you are not what has happened to you.

It is how you choose to respond that matters, and what you decide to do.