Manage Disruptive Change Book: Coping With COVID Complications
When it comes to disruption, few things in recent memory have canceled more plans than COVID-19. Managing disruptive changes can be extremely difficult.
Here some of the ways a manage disruptive change book can help you constructively deal with setbacks and delays in your life.
Cataloging the Change
Accepting that your plans have changed, sometimes dramatically, can be the first step in managing disruptive change.
Dear Former Self
If COVID-19 forced you to scrap, change, or delay a major life milestone, you're not alone. Managing disruptive changes of this nature requires the courage to acknowledge where you are, not where you thought you'd be. To accept and manage disruptive changes, begin by writing a letter to your former self. In your letter, it's important to acknowledge where you thought you'd be and where you currently find yourself. Although the act of writing this letter can feel silly, giving yourself a platform to make peace with your previous expectations for the future can help you begin to chart a new course for your life.
Artifact Audit
The things you own can sometimes remind you of a future that never materialized. Another way to manage disruptive change is to gather all of the things in your house that connect you to a future that never quite happened. For instance, if you had planned to start college this fall but were forced to delay or change your plans entirely, gathering the items you thought you'd bring with you to college can make your feeling tangible. If these artifacts represent a future that you no longer want to pursue, you might consider donating them to a local charity or selling them online.
Tentative Timelines
The COVID-19 pandemic made many people realize that life's plans are sometimes best written in pencil. To manage disruptive changes, it's sometimes important to scale your plans to reflect the immediacy of what you can control.
24-Hour Timeline
The COVID-19 pandemic cleared many of our schedules completely. However, this extra time can sometimes feel like a yawning void in your life. Creating future plans in a COVID environment sometimes requires looking ahead a few hours, rather than planning days, weeks, months, and/or years into the future. You might find solace in creating an incremental timeline for the next 24 hours. For instance, what are you doing now? What will you be doing in 1 hour? What will you be doing in 5 hours? What will you be doing in 10 hours? What will you be doing in 18 hours? Answering these questions can help you manage disruptive changes by focusing on your more immediate future plans.