Loose Change

Check your pockets and your pocket books.  My guess is you have some loose change – maybe a few pennies, quarters and dimes.  Now check the top of your dresser.  More loose change.   Now, the junk drawer (come on, I know you have at least one in your house!).  Yep, more loose change.   Oh, I almost forgot – the center console of your car.   A vast treasure trove of loose change!    Keep checking – your golf bag, that old purse, the suitcase.   I bet you’ll find more loose change.

 

So why don’t we throw that change out?   It’s not doing us any good sitting in all those places.   We don’t throw it out because deep down, we know that change is valuable.   Or it will be when we finally take the time to do something with it.   Just ask my husband – I think he’s paid for vacations with our loose change!  He keeps a big plastic jar and regularly consolidates all our loose change in it.  Each time he cashes that jar in, it’s worth a couple hundred dollars.   Our change is valuable because he takes action.

 

It seems to me that this is a good analogy for our lives at work.   We know change is valuable if we take action.  But we find it hard to take that step to “make change” – pun intended, by the way.

 

One of my favorite quotes is “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.”  Think about it.  Change is inevitable.  Growth is optional.   That is so true.  Change is going to accumulate all around us – just as the loose change does.  Whether we like it or not, change is going to happen.  It’s up to us to use that change for growth.  If we take action, if we manage the change, then we have the opportunity to grow.  To grow personally and professionally.  To grow our businesses.   Without change, you don’t get growth.  

I love change.  It’s exhilarating.  It’s scary.  It keeps things fresh and interesting and it opens up new possibilities.   No one wants to get stuck in a rut, yet we do when we fail to embrace change.   Most of the time, we resist change because we don’t know the outcome.  It may not work.  We might fail or look stupid.   It might be hard.   Why change something that’s working?  All valid reasons if the world would just stand still.   But it doesn’t – everything is changing all the time.   Your customers are changing.  Your competitors are changing.  Even the rules are changing.   So why aren’t you?

 

Remember, change is inevitable.  Growth is optional.   Now, here’s my challenge to you.  Every time you empty your pockets of that loose change, I want you to think differently about some business change or personal change you’ve been resisting.   Scoop up that loose change, put it in the change jar and take action.  Cha-ching!

 

Written by Pattye Moore   Pattyem@giantpartners.biz