I have heard the quote, “The only two constants in life are Death and Taxes”.  I would like to add another constant, that of “Change”.  In today’s world Change is happening so fast that we now accept it as normal and yet it is still hard to comprehend at times.

Two weeks ago I switched jobs.  It seemed like the right time and a good opportunity.  At eight and a half years at my current job I had become comfortable and the work seemed easy.  I went back to a company where I had previously worked for 13 years.  You would think that after being there for 13 years I would be able to step in take off, but not to be.  In the 8 years of being absent, a lot of the processes had changed and I started feeling a bit of self-doubt, that maybe I should have stayed where it was comfortable.   Then I realized what I was doing, I wanted to remove the opportunity for new growth for a state of comfort.  Change takes us out of our comfort zone and makes us grow into a new place.  So, even though I am doing some of the same things at the new job, it is different and making me learn and with the new learning comes growth.  After two weeks , I am starting to find my way through the maze and starting to feel more at ease.  It is causing me to look at what I am doing differently and I have gained new understanding.

This whole process has caused me to reflect on the value of change.  Being a programmer, I am usually the one that introduces change.  I see it as beneficial for making the users’ job easier.  Yet, the users see the change as hard because they are comfortable with the old process and are now having to learn a new process.  Moving to the new job, I don’t have the same system tools, so I am now required to build processes with the new tools, giving me a different perspective to what I thought I knew.  This will force me to learn new ways of looking at problems and solutions.   I will now take my past learning and apply my new learning improving my knowledge and changing the approach I will take with different situations.

Our lives are changing daily with all the new experiences we face.  We have the opportunity to learn and grow with each change we encounter.  As I have posted in the past, our attitudes in dealing with these changes are critical in determining the direction we want to go in life.  Change can cause some strong feelings within us and if we allow these feelings to blur the growth opportunity, then we are only hurting ourselves.  But, if we look at each situation as a new growth opportunity, our understanding will be magnified and increased.  Innovation comes from increased understanding.