Adaptation is far more significant than the goals you’re setting or the destination you’re currently coveting. Adaptation is the process that will help you become who you want to be and it’s the process that will get you to where you’ve always wanted to be in your life and your career.
Are you regularly reinventing your self or reworking your dreams or perhaps revisiting the process you use to achieve both? I feel like I’ve been reinventing myself my entire life, never the less, the process of adaptation continues to change for me.
Adaptation can be a process by which you’re becoming better suited to your environment. Moreover, a process during which you’re finding opportunities to shape your environment so it’s working better for you.

Adaptation: it’s a process

creation adapts

Adaptation: it’s a process innate in nature

Stepping back and watching the little aspects of this process in your life and career requires practice. Nonetheless, it’s a useful skill to build. Seeing when it impacts you, puts you in the driver’s seat for your career. It’s when the process is in high gear that you want to be making very conscious decisions. It’s a key component in being a resilient person.

I attended a great event this week; the focus was on the  willingness to “boycott what you thought”. In other words, the speakers were challenging us to broaden our perspective and open our minds. I came away thinking about adaptation. Perhaps partly because it’s the lens I’ve chosen to be looking through this week, but I’m believing it’s because the concepts are connected.

I’m working on a different approach in my practice. The process is pushing my beliefs about who I am – my capabilities and what’s scaring me. When I first left my executive position, one of the bits of feedback I was receiving frequently was that I sound too corporate.  Additionally, in response to a fresh marketing campaign this week, I received feedback that I’m sounding too assumptive; it’s “coming off as self-serving and inauthentic”. Yikes! I’m adapting and pushing myself; this feedback was painful to hear but very useful. My learning about Instagram may equally shed light on  how I’m working to adapt my approach. One of my new clients, in my work with people 30-35 year’s old, implored me to post daily on IG. A month or two later she started suggesting I try adding some video and you may be noticing I’m posting a weekly Wednesday story on my theme. WOW – getting to the point in 1 minute has proven a stretch for me! Pushing me to adapt! But I suppose it’s just one of the recent examples of how the digital age is requiring many of us to adapt.

 

Adaptation: One of the BIG ones that impacts us all

Born to be malleable. Sounds like a good thing and in many ways it really is. I discuss this core-way our brain adapted to ensure the survival of our species in this week’s newsletter.  There are 3 distinct adaptations and I dig into them in depth as part of my system: “Banking Impact & Influence”.
In the newsletter I suggest a couple of things to think about. The second suggestion being the importance of welcoming new and even contrary perspectives into your world. In essence, it’s a way of ensuring you’re not insulating yourself from challenges that stretch your thinking. You see, this adaptation of being malleable makes you prone to wearing blinders to different ways of seeing and being. Below is the story I referenced in the newsletter.

Malleability – An  Adaptation Gone Awry

You’ll see in my newsletter the brain adaptation of malleability was key to survival when the human species was young but it’s also what limits our scope in ways we sometimes refer to as “tribal”. Professor Nisbett of University of Michigan was surprised to see it play out in him, limiting his thinking. Nisbett was describing himself as a “lifelong universalist concerning the nature of thought” (2003, p.xiii “The Geography of Thought: how Asians and Westerners think differently…and why“), assuming what he had found to be true about thinking, applied equally to everyone. THEN, he was challenged by a graduate student one day who, expressing delight about an insight to his professor, observing that while he saw the world as a circle, the professor saw it as a line. Nisbett, to his credit, acceptied the challenge, ultimately proving his student’s observation about the differences in thinking to be correct. Nisbett had fallen prey to his brain’s malleability that had socialized him to see his perspective as the universal perspective. What if you started paying attention to when this adaptation is limiting your thinking?

Adaptation: It’s a Choice

failing to adapt creates failure

All failure is failure to adapt

Have you ever watched a person who faces more odds, more challenges than the average? Perhaps they’re challenges from birth or the result of something that’s lost or broken in the midst of life? Regardless, these people offer more dramatic and meaningful examples of what it means to navigate the process of adaptation.
Sharing an example of one of these people in my Instagram story this week added another layer of meaning to this theme. When commenting above about how IG posting, specifically regarding video, has forced me to adapt my style, I was thinking about how many takes I had to do in the early days. When I started, practicing self-compassion, I’d allow myself to record the video with however much time I needed to tell the story. Often my first take would be 3 minutes, which frankly felt really quick. Taking a few minutes to consider the essence of the message, I’d keep trying and each “take” would get shorter and shorter. On the Wednesday afternoon (Nov 14th) with my niece, who is the subject of the story, looking on, I not only brought the video down under 1 minute, I did it in 4 takes. Lesson learned: adaptation requires that you:
  1. exercise self-compassion;
  2. look for the essence of your goal or project;
  3. establish a metric to improve and keep pressing on.

Making every step you’re taking bring you closer to the change you’ve chosen, is hard work AND it’s worth every bit of energy you expend.

 


Adaptation is a process for good while also carrying the possibility of limiting your scope of thinking. The point isn’t just to adapt, it’s to be self-aware enough to know when adaptability is the solution to the problem you’re facing. That’s why you must #dothework.
How We Can Walk together…

The process you’ve used historically to manage the growth and the stagnant elements of your relationship with Adaptation may be worth a deeper look. Adaptation is a fundamental process that dictates how you engage in your career.  If you haven’t listened to my  my signature story , it’s available on the player below, HERE OR you can click over on my website BIG WHY Story on the services pages  – you’ll hear me navigating a rut I create for myself by essentially failing to see ways to adapt my learning effectively. Observing  and naming cowardly behaviour helped me move forward after a difficult loss AND failing to find a way to manage the “chip” it left on my shoulder hurt me for years in my career.

Need to get unstuck in your career? Together, we’ll find a path that will take you out of that rut.

Want to find a clear path to success on your terms? We’ll craft a personalize strategy that puts you on a progressive journey.

Don’t feel valued for your unique perspective at work? A great path is there for you, we’ll discover the sign posts together.

Feel like you may be in the wrong job? We’ll unpack the limits and craft your way forward.

Want to learn to #unpack4impact?

Once you have the skills to unpack the emotions and barriers and triggers and mindset challenges with the skills in my system, you’ll begin to see the impact in your career and you’ll find what matters most to you.

My goal is to make my system accessible and affordable. There are many ways you can engage with me. CLICK below on at least one to LEARN more or to BOOK time with me:

 

Ready to walk with you.