Change is not inevitable?!  I must be crazy, right?  Change happens all of the time, and at a blinding rate these days.  But change and the effects of it are NOT inevitable – how you deal with change is a secret weapon you can use to be successful.

Saying that change is inevitable implies a certain degree of passiveness, as if this uncontrollable force and its effect are out of your control. But nothing could be further from the truth. Since change affects us all, it is how we respond to change that defines our lives and businesses.

Change can be unsettling due to the nature of it not being planned – it comes when it comes. But if we focus on embracing change as an opportunity, surprisingly good things happen. True enough, some change is the result of tragic circumstances, such as death, war, and destruction, and I am not making light of the difficulty of dealing with changes of this magnitude. But oftentimes change is perceived as having tragic circumstances when indeed it is a tremendous opportunity!

We hear stories everyday that make us fearful of change and the impact it will have on our lives and businesses. Swift technological changes have been accused of wiping out businesses that have been successful for many years, but are now simply “outdated” and become replaced. The big stores will run off the mom-and-pops. Gloom and doom.

But there are also stories of success, where the change didn’t result in annihilation, but instead resulted in thriving. Taking change head-on and thinking to yourself, “I understand this change may hurt me in this way, but in what other ways can I leverage this change?” In what ways were you unique prior to the change that can be applied afterward? If this change will also be affecting your competitors, how can you respond in a way that can give you a leg up on them if they don’t address the change in the same positive way?

This is far more than a “when life gives us lemons, make lemonade” speech (another saying with a negative undertone). This is a life and business approach to understanding that there are TWO DIFFERENT EFFECTS of change: First, there is the passive impact if you did nothing, the result of just standing by. But the second, and more important, effect is the way in which you determine how you will utilize the change in a positive manner – oftentimes wiping out any negative impact and resulting in a positive outcome.

This is what happens when you hear people say, “At the time, I thought it was the end of the word; today, I look back and realize that was the best thing that ever happened to me.” Looking back, you would see that those people and businesses embraced the change – even if initially reluctantly and begrudgingly – and made that change work in their favor.

Change is good.