At my small high school on Long Island, graduating seniors signed each other’s yearbooks with personal messages intended to inspire us for the future. One of the favorites among our close group of friends was, “You’re perfect just the way you are – please don’t ever change.” While flattering, it just didn’t seem right to me. Who wanted to be stuck with the same old image we were branded with in high school? This was a time for adventure, exploration, discovery, and new experiences. After all, we were about to reinvent ourselves as young adults moving on to college and beyond.
At graduation, I shocked my friends, family, faculty – and even myself – when I tossed aside my approved speech and instead stated my belief that we SHOULD change, and that we should WANT to change. While looking out at a sea of raised eyebrows, I confessed I was looking forward to shedding old patterns and expectations. I was sad to leave the comfort of my school and friends but for me, graduation was the launching point to change into the person I wanted to become.
And so began my life-long practice of looking at change as a positive rather than a negative. I learned to consider each major life change as a sort of “graduation” in itself – marked by tests and challenges, but also open road and blue sky.
Of course, change can often feel more like a crisis than an opportunity. It can be difficult, emotional, uncomfortable, unpredictable and messy. Often, one small change can itself generate a spiral of more dilemmas and problems to be solved before progress can be made.
But we can choose how we react to change. We can resist, or we can accept the inevitable and leverage it as an opportunity for development. Every turning point in our life can be a moment to step back and think about new priorities, set new goals, and figure out how to achieve them.
When life or career changes force us to reinvent ourselves for the next phase, we can’t just make it up or fake it. We need to dig deep to find our next direction. But the harder we work at it, the more meaningful it becomes – and we get to graduate at the top of our own life class!