Why Adaptability Could Be Your Best Trait
Please ignore the unedited version of this post on my screen.
I was stressing. I had just found out last-minute that I had to spend the next three days at a luxurious riverside resort with a pool and miles of hiking trails for work. The food would be delectable and the service superior. Quelle horreur.
You see, in that list of desirable amenities, I was focused on one phrase: last-minute.
It does not matter how exciting or upscale an offering is, if it wasn’t what I was planning, I panic. Even in my 40s, when I should well have learned that life rarely goes as planned.
I handle it better than I used to. Instead of saying “no,” or having an anxiety attack, I took some deep breaths, thought about it and realized it was more than doable. I rearranged one or two things and, voilá: instant working minivacation. By the time I was throwing business casual clothes in a suitcase, I was actually excited.
I know this last-minute panic isn’t unique to me. We all do it to some extent — with personal things, with business opportunities. We want to dig in our heels when things don’t go as planned. We want to complain and try to force things back on the track we put them on initially. But there are so many opportunities in the unexpected.
We don’t have control of our surroundings nearly as much as we like to think. Things will go off the rails, no matter how hard we plan. We might as well seize the opportunity the spontaneous presents, even if it’s much worse than being presented with a surprise trip to a resort.
It’s about being adaptable.
Laurie Leinwand defines adaptability as “the ability to be creative and flexible in the face of new situations.” But, she notes, "most of us have a tendency to shut down in the face of new things.” Change, she says, is like a rip current, if you swim against it, you’ll never make it to shore. Better to ride it like a wave; you may feel like you’re in a trough, but a rising crest is soon to follow.
Not only is it helpful to accept change when you cannot control it, it’s useful to put your energy into finding the advantages it provides instead of focusing on how much it sucks. It’s really just a modern version of “In every cloud, there’s a silver lining.” (I know, groan; I hate it, too, and yet here we are.)
The unexpected thing that led me to working poolside instead of in my office wasn’t great.
It was someone else’s unfortunate situation and a re-work of an event to be partially virtual. But the fact is, things changed at the 11th hour, and no amount of hand-wringing is going to alter that. This is what we have; might as well look for opportunities to do what we can with the situation.
It was a chance for me to see some things in action at work that I normally don’t get to see — a chance to learn. And it was totally worth having to refigure my kid’s day camp carpool, so I could write this post just after emerging from the lazy river.
There are worse places to work than here, for sure.
I don’t want to say “look on the bright side.”
People have said that to me at one too many inappropriate times; my relationship with that cliché is irreparable. But I will say this: when unexpected, inconvenient surprises come your way, once you’re done freaking out that your routine is disrupted, look for the possibilities that weren’t there before.
~ April
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