Why CHANGE?

I met with someone who worked for the same company for more than 2 decades and is on a "break". I interviewed a speaker for my flagship WomenChangemaker series and she was taken aback when the job she had for almost 2 decades is no longer there. I received a message from a reader of my Linkedin articles and posts that she enjoyed my writing and she is in "transition" looking for a new job.

I started asking myself. What is it about transitions? Is it the same as "change"?

How can you make sense of the change that is happening to you? or at you? Why do you want to change? Why are you in a transition?

How do we even begin to talk about change or transition?

Why does this topic intrigue me?

Change has many underlying assumptions and stories. I run a series called WomenChangemakers because I had assumed many people are consumed by change - change that is forced upon you, change that you choose, change that took you by surprise, change you only realised by hindsight, change you hide under, change that cripples you, change that liberates you.....and the list goes on.

How honest are you about the change that is happening to you? Change can be empowering or inhibiting.

Why did I change?

You can google about change, read about change. Nothing beats hearing real stories of change. Connecting the dots, I came up with the following answers to why I made certain decisions to change.

1. To get what I want

Why do people stay where they are? Why do we choose to get stuck? What's easier than staying put? I believe you need to change to get what you want - if progress is what you want. You make things better for yourself. You make a change in order to achieve something you wanted.

I realised that if I continued to work 7 days a week, zealously committed to delivering beyond what I was hired for, I would end up being by myself the rest of my life. I wanted to be personally successful as much as career successful. I was not about to accept that I was only good at one and not the other. I was able to accept that I had to choose one over the other.

That is why I gave up an amazing job at O2, walked away from pounds of bonus, to arrive at New York to look for a husband.

2. To rise above

This has to do a lot with being born optimistic. (When asked to vote nature vs nurture, I vote nature.) I make changes when I do not want to be stuck in a situation. Hence reframing the problem brings out a solution that leads to a change in the way I look at the situation and taking a course of action that rises above how the situation would usually be handled.

This is when I make a conscious choice and it does not matter if it is right or wrong. It is about rationalising to yourself to analyse the situation with a more panoramic angle from above. This puts yourself in a position of strength rather than defeat.

3. To disable excuses

It is tiresome to hear excuses from anyone. That should include yourself. There are things that are low priority in my life. One such example would be exercise. Putting aside those, I would encourage myself to make a change so as not to make excuses for discontent or inertia. When I reluctantly came back to Singapore 2.5 years ago, feeling I am looking for reasons to leave again, I took a big step to find ways to re-plug myself into this society. I had to take some actions to give it a fair shot. Pushing myself out of my comfort zone to initiate some changes was big at that time. Now I am too happy I did it.

4. To stretch and test

I was so sure I was irrelevant couple of years ago and for a good many years. But when I was triggered by the curiosity about startups, I began to stretch. Though I am not an exercise enthusiast, stretching my imagination was something I enjoyed doing. Evidently the more I did it, the further the distance and speed at which I could achieve it encouraged me to allow myself to test more and reach goals I would not have set for myself before.

I wished I could say the same for physical exercise but this form of stretching does resonate really well with me. Now I want to break more records, try new methods, iterating more because I am so positive about the outcomes that often exceed my expectations.

5. To tap on more opportunities

Now that I have learnt more about myself, about how much more I can learn, change is a way to seize the day. Take time to make connections, gain knowledge through others, collaborate with others so you can scale exponentially faster. You must have the mindset to change. You are not necessarily changing your core but maybe changing your approach, your methods, your thinking.

Someone recently told me that they liked these 3 words in an earlier article "Trying is free." If you are not finding new opportunities, not changing means chances will be pretty much the same.

You can choose to be pessimistic about change or fearful that things will not work out but not trying at all means not knowing "what if" either.

6. To be proactive

Once you have tasted good results from change, you want to embrace change, chase change, take charge. When you start connecting the dots and appreciate that if you had stood still, you would not have grown because you decided to change, then you develop a bigger appetite for change.

I practise looking back to 3 months before, and comparing to 3 months before that 3 months and then to the year before to calibrate how much I know now that I did not know before. Just knowing this alone makes me want to accelerate change even more.

I am retired. (no one agrees) Sometimes it even feels like I am catching up with lost time or it looks like there is not much time left. I can't help myself. It is so empowering to see the ripple effect of every small but deliberate change I make.

Here are 6 reasons I actively live by. I am sure there is more. Apply at least one of them if it resonates with you.

Change is when you take charge and not when you wait in transition.

Christina Teo spearheaded WomenChangemakers in March 2018 and is taking the 9th to Hong Kong June 26 and 10th to New York Sept 7 and returning to Singapore with a WomenChangemakers weekend bootcamp in Singapore in October. Stay tuned via instagram.com/womenchangemakers / youtube.com/she1Kwomenchangemakers / facebook.com/womenchangemaker / she1K.com/womenchangemakers

She also launched she1K, the world's first corporate executive women network that empowers, funds and boards startups, having been in technology and mobile corporates and now active in the startup eco-system herself.