Many people struggle with change in their life. At a very young age I used to be one of them and whilst I can‘t quite tell what it was that altered my view on change, I am very glad it did - probably gradually - happen.
Back in the days when inline skates were just the latest thing, I was leading a bunch of other school kids as a hockey team, playing on the rink in the tiny school yard of our village. As even in winter it was rarely cold enough to get ice to skate on, we would take on the teams from neighboring villages on classic roller skates. Until the first kids brought their brand new inline skates. They were a lot more like ice skates yet, for some obscure reason I felt a genuine dislike for them. They weren‘t the real thing, they felt not authentic, wrong.
Six or seven years later the same diffuse feeling got hold of me when many of my friends bought cell phones; they were finally made to carry in your pocket rather than like heavy briefcases, only suitable for cars.
Being reachable by phone all the time, possibly even carrying that ugly handset on the outer side of my belt - not me! I didn‘t need this new-fashioned stuff to be cool.
In short, I probably sounded a lot like my grandparents during my adolescent years. I was focused on the downsides of new things, on the threat they posed to the established and cherished old, I wanted the world to stay as it was, to conserve it.
Well, I learned a lot since then. I am not saying we should rush to everything that‘s new just because it is new and I am not saying we should fall prey to FOMO either. What I am saying, though, is that I am really grateful for the change in mindset that I experienced, whatever it was that caused it. A change that made me more curious, the way young people naturally are. A change that made me look for opportunities in new things. How could they make my life or that of others easier? What predicaments could they help me get out of? In what ways could they support me in developing?
Fact is, nothing new is without risk (nothing in life actually is) and most things really just are what we make of them. So, if we focus on the risks, we will want to avoid them and preceive the novelty rather as a threat. A focus on risks makes us reluctant to change. By doing so, there is a good chance the change will happen any way and will hit us less prepared, or - as often the case in the professional world - it will render the stubborn obsolete.
A focus on opportunity on the other hand will make us make the right moves to ride the wave and benefit from the pros and thus contribute to reduce our vulnerability to the cons.
Let me make the obvious example of cryptocurrency. Whilst jumping in with both feet by selling your house for bitcoin is certainly exposing you to different risks, it would also be unwise to abstain from it altogether as this carries the risk of not being up to speed should cryptocurrencies one day take over. But being curious and open minded, focusing on the opportunities of the technologies and learning its ropes at an early stage is most likely bringing a lot more upside than not.
Realizing that change is really the only constant in life and that without change there is bound to be death, truly realizing these simple truths, is key to a change in mindset. From there onwards, mindset needs to result in actions. Expose yourself to change, step outside of the comfort zone of the well-known and familiar. You‘ll gain plenty of great experiences, and they are ultimately what life is all about.