When Your Reality Changes,
But the Way You Operate Hasn’t

Sometimes our circumstances change before we fully recognize how differently we may need to meet them.

We may move into a different role, enter a new stage of life, take on greater responsibility, experience a change in a relationship, or find ourselves in circumstances that are simply different from what they were before.

We know something has changed. What we may not notice as easily is that we are still meeting this new reality in much the same way we met the old one.

We continue doing what has worked for us. We rely on familiar ways of thinking, responding, making decisions, and relating to others. And for a while, we may not question it, until something begins to feel harder than it used to.

There are reasons we learn to operate the way we do.

We learn what helps us succeed and be effective, and what helps us manage responsibility, relationships, uncertainty, or change.

An individual contributor may become very good at solving problems and getting things done. A parent may become accustomed to guiding and protecting a child. Someone building a career may learn to measure progress through achievement and productivity.

These ways of operating can serve us well. And then our circumstances change.

The individual contributor becomes a leader. The child becomes an adult. A career ends or takes a different direction. A relationship changes. The responsibilities that once filled our days are no longer the same.

The environment around us may be different, while some of the assumptions we are operating from remain unchanged.

When our circumstances change, it may not be immediately clear what we need to do differently.

We may simply notice that something isn't working as well.

A leader who has always been valued for having the answers may find it difficult to step back and allow others to find their own. A parent may know that an adult child needs independence and still feel responsible for preventing mistakes. Someone who has spent years building a career may reach retirement and discover how much identity, structure, and purpose came from work.

The familiar response isn't necessarily wrong.

And when we continue meeting today's circumstances with yesterday's assumptions, expectations, or ways of responding, friction can emerge.

When something feels difficult, we naturally look at the situation in front of us. But it can also be useful to notice what we are bringing to it.

What has actually changed? What am I still assuming? What am I expecting from myself because it was expected before? Am I responding to what is happening now, or to what used to be true?

These questions can help us see where our current reality and our familiar way of operating may no longer match.

Sometimes adapting means learning a new skill, but not always.

A new reality may ask us to listen differently, make decisions differently, let go of some control, tolerate more uncertainty, communicate differently, or reconsider what responsibility means now.

It may ask us to use capabilities we already have in a different way. And sometimes it asks us to develop capacities that were not as necessary in the season before.

A more useful question may be:

There is a difference between knowing that our circumstances have changed and recognizing that we may need to meet them differently.

That recognition doesn't require us to leave behind everything that helped us get here.

We can carry forward what still serves us. We can reconsider what doesn't. And we can develop different ways of thinking, responding, and choosing as our circumstances change.

This is part of self-leadership.

Self-leadership includes becoming increasingly aware of what the situation in front of us requires and how we want to meet it.