Slay The Fear Dragon

When you move to a small town swamp, there are some life adjustments necessary. Add in a few catastrophic natural disasters, and, well, change becomes the norm.

This fun fact surfaced (pun intended) after I purchased my piece of paradise in the summer of 2023—when you live in a swamp, you get to deal with lovely septic issues. Breaking the TP-to-toilet habit wasn’t so bad. Just mid-life potty training, I thought. (Fear factor rating: ⭐)

Shaving my legs outside one evening (Fun fact #2: heavy rain + septic = no shower for a bit. Fear factor rating: ⭐⭐), I chuckled and said out loud, “Welp, guess this is how I do things now.” I didn’t realize at the time just how often I would utter that phrase over the course of the next year.

Fast forward through five hurricanes and three catastrophic floods (Fear factor rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐), I am living in an RV alongside what I once called home. The mantra I uttered over a basin of water became my friendly internal reminder that change is inevitable, and my reaction to it dictates my well-being.

And there’s the part you’ve been waiting for—the change management spin. While I’m not a proponent of the JFDI Methodology as a management approach to organizational change, I am a fan of building individual resilience to change.

I could have, and many times did, get angry at the changes happening to me. “I can’t and I don’t wanna!” could have been the mantra I adopted, but by consciously choosing to accept and adapt to the new normal (the many, many new normals) I reclaimed my power. Not a victim, but a strong, resilient Warrior Goddess. Most days. Some days. Occasionally.

Sure, new business processes aren’t exactly a battlefield…or are they? Resistance to change has fear at its core. And is conquering fear not the same victory regardless of the arena? So the next time you find yourself resisting yet another new process, grab your shield and go make that new software dragon your kitten! (Fear factor rating: ⭐)

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
–Eleanor Roosevelt

Shannon Vasko is a natural-born planner with a passion for strategy and integrated communications. AI was not used for content creation. © MI Compass Services.