Fixed or Fluid: What's Your Perspective?

Heard this one?  How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?  Well, only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.

Light bulbs aside, it’s difficult to find people who want to change because, generally speaking, we look at life from a perspective that we call “fixed’.

If you have this perspective, you see life as static and nicely packaged with clear boundaries that define YOUR job, YOUR business, YOUR responsibilities and YOUR reality.  In other words, the fixed perspective draws a sharp line between the YOU ‘in here’ and the rest of the world ‘out there’.
Also, from the fixed perspective, time, for you, is a linear experience.  Events that have occurred in the past are separate from each other and may have no bearing on events occurring now or in the future. 

Change, as a result, is probably something that you dislike and resist if you can.  Change is something that happens to you from the outside and requires you to make unwanted adaptations.  As result, change is something to be avoided whenever possible.

The fixed perspective is the ‘default setting’ for us as human beings.  Much of what we do is motivated by the desire to maintain things as they are.  Consequently, the fixed perspective is also the ‘default setting’ for most businesses.

For you and your business to survive and remain relevant in a perpetually changing environment, the first change you can make is in your perspective.  Rather than seeing life as fixed, see it as fluid.

Developing this perspective enables you to view life as changing, moving and evolving.  Life, in other words, is a process for you rather than a thing.  As a result, time is less linear and more interconnected. 

From the fluid perspective, you see change as the natural order of your environment and change, therefore, defines your participation within it.  Because change is something you and everyone else will inevitably experience, you develop strategies to adapt to change when it comes and initiate change on your own when necessary.

Because the fluid perspective recognizes change, it also allows you to anticipate and prepare for change.  And this is why your business will thrive and remain relevant if you encourage the development of a change culture.

Change, after all, is no longer the exception.  It’s the rule.