Expect Change

Change is everywhere, no matter where we look. In our private lives: our children finish nursery or school or move out; parents grow old or die; we ourselves age, move house or separate. At work, we take on new roles, attend further training, become self-employed, our boss or colleague changes. In society, there are new norms and new language rules, our democracy is vulnerable, climate change is threatening us and our different ideas on how to combat climate change are driving us apart.

We can't escape changes. Although we have all understood this cognitively, we don't particularly like them. Repression and denial of the facts is often our strategy. The consequence of this is that the inevitable, namely the unstoppable change and its effects, hits us all the harder.

In my seminar "Flow of Change: Mastering Change"at the end of last month, I worked with my participants to develop the following 10 effective strategies for dealing with change appropriately. Perhaps you can make a mental note of one or another of them so that you have them ready for your next change situation.

  1. Acceptance instead of denial: Accept that change is part of life. As Heraclitus of Ephesus said, "The only constant in life is change."
  2. Expecting change and facing the facts buys you a bit of time to prepare for what is to come.
  3. Stop automatisms in our evaluations: The first two points may help us not to be immediately alarmed by the next change and go on the defensive, but to first take a look and analyse what it means for us and how great the threat from the "new" really is.
  4. Letting go of the old and welcoming the new through rituals.
  5. Allowing transitions and grief and take time for them.
  6. It's better to shape change yourself or at least help shape it, instead of just being passive or even feeling like a victim. Most of the time, our area of influence is larger than we think.
  7. Practice change by consciously taking small steps out of your comfort zone. Those who regularly challenge themselves (not overwhelm themselves) are better able to cope with new and uncertain things.
  8. Cultivate relationships and thus build a support network for turbulent times.
  9. Look after your own physical and mental health in order to increase your resilience.
  10. Acknowledge change as an opportunity to grow and learn. When we look at past changes, we usually see these positive aspects. But it is only in the moments of challenges that we find it difficult to gain anything positive from the situation. We can change that!


Feel free to send me your experiences and your own practices on how you deal with the topic of change.

This text first appeared in my newsletter 'Innovation on Wednesday'. It is published every three weeks. For subscription click here


Further reading:


Andrea SchmittInnovationstrainerinAm Mittelpfad 24aD 65520 Bad Camberg+49 64 34-905 997+49 175 5196446
Your message
Your data

If you contact me via the contact form, I will store your email address and other data provided in the form. You can find more information in the privacy notice.


This website uses a so-called “Session Cookie“ to save the language version you chose and to secure the contact form. This session cookie is deleted automatically when you quit your browser. If you agree, your consent is saved in another cookie for four weeks. Furthermore we use the statistic tool Matomo which uses another cookie. You can find more information and the possibility to opt-out from Matomo in ourprivacy police.