What's on my mind? Plans, perspective and progress

Recently, my son was home for a very short trip between his internship and the start of his senior year at Colorado School of Mines. As we were walking home after a nice dinner and play in the city -?Spirited Away?(a must-see), he began to reflect. He's a year away from finishing his degree and is trying to figure out, what’s next??

?His plan prior to his internship this summer was to graduate and then go to grad school abroad. And I have to say, he was pretty set on this. He'd investigated schools, made a list of those to apply to in the fall, and the programmes he was interested in.?

Then, life happened.?

His internship opened up new opportunities to possibly work abroad, skip his spring semester, work for six months and finish his last semester in the fall of 2025.?

The plan was no longer set in stone.?

With just a few months of working in the real world over the summer, the possibilities, the opportunities, and desires for the future changed.?

As this process of planning, progressing and gaining some perspective on the here and now, as well as a future new to him, it reminded me how important it's been in my career to pivot and change direction when opportunities or challenges present themselves.?

Change is a constant in our personal and professional lives. Life doesn’t always work out the way we might expect, and most life plans change in one way or another.?

I thought I was going to be a physical therapist and then realised after an internship that I'm better with computers than with people who are sick and in pain, so I changed my degree.?

I thought I'd be a network engineer and stay on a technical path but was convinced to move into sales.?

I was never going to have children, but I have two and in a couple of weeks, I'll be an empty nester as my daughter heads off to college.?

I thought I'd live and retire in Colorado, but I’ve lived in New York, New Mexico, North Carolina, California and now London.?

I said I’d never work for a service provider, but I’ve found extreme purpose in making connections around the world working for an amazing service provider!?

Was any of this in the original plan??

No.?

Sometimes, we choose to change the plan and sometimes that choice is made for us.?

Throughout my life, I’ve embraced these changes regardless of how they came about. I've embraced them as a new chapter rather than seeing it as an ending.?

And I won’t deny that some of the changes were harder than others. When my son left for university, I was sad for a good three months and I sense it will be worse when my daughter leaves (who is going to entertain us at the dinner table?).?

At Colt, we’ve seen significant change since last year’s acquisition, and we’ll need to embrace even more change.?

We're integrating our teams, updating our systems, and migrating our data - all while maintaining our commitment to an exceptional customer experience. Throughout this transformative process, we continuously need to reassess and adjust our plans, optimizing our processes with a growth mindset.

So, let’s all get ready as we start to write our last chapter for 2024!?