How to Navigate the 4 Types of Work-Life Change | Big Think.
There’s four types of change that happen in life, and they start with this really simple idea of imagine a vertical line. At the top of it is a voluntary change, and at the bottom is an involuntary change. A voluntary change is where you choose to change. I’ve mentioned before this graphic designer who decided to go back and take classes. He made a voluntary change.
An industrial designer I know didn’t want to change; didn’t want to learn AutoCAD, and an involuntary change happened to him. He lost his job. There are all these moments in life where we get to choose to change, or change happens to us. But not every voluntary change is good, and not every involuntary change is bad.
We’ve all voluntarily gone to the wrong job for longer than we should. We’ve all voluntarily dated idiots longer than we should. And we’ve all had involuntary things happen to us that were good, too. I think about Dave Barnes, my musician friend in Nashville, where I live. He had a song go number one. Blake Shelton, the country music star, recorded a song of his called "God Gave Me You," and it changed Dave’s life forever as a songwriter.
If you ask him how Blake Shelton found out about that song, he’ll tell you he rented a car at Hertz at the airport, and the previous person who had rented it had programmed a station that Blake never listens to. He got in the car, and he turned it on, and my song that I was singing came on. Blake Shelton said, “You know what? I’m married to Miranda Lambert. We’re in this season of our life. I should record that song.”
Dave had this amazing involuntary change that happened to him. So have you. You’ve had that happen to you where a friend you haven’t talked to in three years calls you up and says, “I know we haven’t connected, but there’s a job I think is perfect for you.” So you have to add this other line to the equation.
If you’ve got a vertical line that goes from voluntary to involuntary, you add another line that goes from negative to positive. When you do that, you see there are these four different do-over moments that every career is going to go through. The first is what’s called a ceiling. It’s when you are voluntarily going towards something negative. You’re getting stuck.
The second is an involuntary negative moment. That’s called a bump. You lose your job; another company buys your company and lays off your sales team. Maybe it’s smaller than that. Maybe you had an amazing manager who loved you and fought to hire you, and then left that company a month after you got there. Or you were part of a great team where you knew how to work with this team, and they shuffled things, and now you’re on a new team, and you’re vulnerable, and you’ve gone through a bump moment.
But what about on the other side of the equation? The positive moments. A voluntary positive decision when you willingly decide to change your life is called a jump. It’s a jump moment. New York City is a jump city where people come here and they jump towards something positive. Starting a blog is a jump moment. Reading a book is a jump moment. Going to a conference, taking a class—it’s you saying, “I’m going to do something positive to change my life.”
The last one is a positive moment that’s involuntary. Where something good out of your control happens. That friend calls you up out of nowhere and offers you a job. It comes in a million different shapes. I talked to a CEO of a bank in Benton Harbor, Michigan. I said, “How did you become CEO?” He said, “Well, I was a teller for a few years, and then my manager got arrested for counterfeiting checks. So her job opened up."
Do you think in his five-year plan he said, “First three years, I’m going to kill it at being a manager and really work hard, and then hopefully somebody above me will go to jail and their job will open up?” Of course not. He got this unexpected moment.
That’s what a career is about: learning how to navigate these four different seasons. It would be great if you could just eliminate the negative side, if you could just say, “I’m going to make jump moments where I do positive things, eat so much kale. I’m going to have opportunity moments where surprises happen to me.” But if you’re watching this video, you know that’s not how life works. That’s not how a career works.
You’ve gone through most of these moments by 9:00 a.m. Before you finish your first coffee, you’ll say, “Okay, I’m in a jump moment, and that’s part of my career, but I’m in a bump moment over here, and my relationship is stuck over here.” What you have to do is navigate these four different career do-overs.