Change is never easy for some people. It causes anxiety and angst, fear and frustration, but the hardest part of facing change is the disequilibrium you feel when faced with it.

Disequilibrium is, quite literally, a feeling of unbalance, of not having both feet on the ground. I get that feeling every time I have to face a major change in my life, and until I feel like I have both feet on the ground, I’m just not comfortable.

One of the worst situations for me, personally, arises when I have to change jobs. It doesn’t matter if the new job makes tons more money than the old one. It doesn’t matter if the benefits are better or my office is bigger. What matters is that I’m out of my element. I don’t know any of the people. My environment is different, and I don’t know the rules. Put those things together, and you have major disequilibrium and an unhappy person, at least for a while.

Feeling self assured is my goal, and I suppose, to some extent, it’s everybody’s goal. (Can you imagine a world where everyone didn’t care about that? I’m not sure that’s a place I’d like to live!) Changing jobs means major insecurity; so how do we reconcile that insecurity for our need to be self assured?

The only way I know is to handle it one of two ways. One, you never change jobs. This method is all well and good if you’re a turnip (which I’m not), but for the more ambitious of us, that alone would make us nuts. The other way is to just grin and bear it. Do whatever you can to learn the environment around you, and soon you won’t have to worry about being different. You’ll be one of the gang, your projects will be easy, and you’ll be a star.

Stumble It!