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You Can Survive Change -- or Thrive on It
Change is coming, whether you're ready for it or not. But you have a choice. You can play dead and let change have its way with you, you can survive it, or you can learn to thrive on it.

Simply lying down and letting change smash into you like a wave, taking you wherever it chooses, isn't the most productive way to respond to change. If you find yourself saying things like, "I'm so stressed" or "I can't take this," you might be taking this approach. You probably end up feeling overwhelmed and less than enthusiastic about any change.

In comparison, surviving change sounds like a great alternative. But simply surviving limits your ability to get the most from change. If in the face of change, you find yourself thinking, "How can I get through this?" or "What can I do to get by?" you may be focusing only on survival. The problem with just surviving is that you merely get by.

When you reach a point where you want to do more than just get by, you're ready to start managing change by making change work for you. Ask yourself these questions:

• "How can I make this work for me?"
   

• "What can I do now that I couldn't do before?"
   

• "What positive things does this change force me to do?"
   

• "What's good about this change?"

Change is a constant, and it's inevitable. How we choose to handle it, though, is personal. When you make the choice to manage change instead of letting it manage you, it's much easier to make change stick.

You can play dead and let change have its way with you, you can survive it, or you can learn to thrive on it.