Success
Adapt or Fail
The importance of embracing change
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In a world that’s perpetually in flux, change is the only constant.
You know this already.
Everyone knows it.
I knew it
(or thought I did).
But it took me a long time…
a LONG time…
to realise I wasn’t living this truth.
I hadn’t grokked it.
I was writing posts and articles disparaging people for not changing with the times.
I was writing about the impending — no, the current climate catastrophe and vilifying society for not changing their ways.
“If we do things the way we’ve always done things, we die.”
Isn’t that the crux of it?
But I wasn’t applying this advice in my own life.
Sure, in ‘green living’ terms my footprint is pretty low.
I’d made significant changes to my life over the years — big changes — in the way my life impacts the world.
But what about in other ways?
Little ways.
What about in the microcosm of my day-to-day life?
The need to change — to flow — applies just as much to art, business and relationships as it does to ecology.
It applies just as much to social media.
If we don’t adapt to change, we fail.
Change happens within us as well as externally.
People said, “Find your niche and stick to it.”
We get terrified of stepping out of our niche, even when our niche is no longer working for us.
Like many people, maybe like you, I built up a following writing about certain topics, because they were the topics I wanted to talk about.
I wrote about what was on my mind.
I said what I felt I needed to say.
I spoke from my heart and it resonated with people.
But then, you feel compelled to keep writing about those topics. You’re afraid that when you write about something else, you’ll lose followers.
So you keep churning out tired content even though it’s not what you long to talk about.
It gets harder and harder to write content until:
*** WRITER’S BLOCK ***
You stop writing because you haven’t got anything new to say about the topics you think your followers want to hear about.
Your afraid your content won’t be read.
The irony.
No-one’s reading your content because you’re not producing any.
Better to produce something and have it flop than not to write at all.
Then there’s Twitter.
Like so many others, I hated what Elon did to Twitter.
I bemoaned every new change he made to the platform as another nail in its coffin.
I kept tweeting in the way I’d always tweeted and my engagement plummeted.
I dug in my heels, felt I was being penalised for not paying for verification, and refused to upgrade.
As a result, my account started dying.
But Elon paid $44 billion to buy Twitter.
Do you really think he’s going to let that baby die?
Elon knows all about adapt and survive.
He understands the need to change — he’s experimenting with it constantly.
“Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own” — Bruce Lee
Those who don’t change die.
Those who are able to embrace change can thrive.
I’ll be writing more about this soon, and about the specifics of some of the changes I’m making in order to revive both my Twitter and my Medium accounts.
