How to Design a Lifestyle to Suit Your Preferred Change Cycle

Working with people who are living or working in high-change environments, I’ve noticed that a lot of them seem to be in those high-change environments because they enjoy change and they’re better than most people at dealing with change. The Renaissance Souls among them feel alive when they’re learning something new, so they seek out new experiences and change their work on a regular basis (or feel frustrated when they don’t). The aspiring traveling location independent professionals I work with are drawn to the stimulation of changing their environment regularly and living in different parts of the world. And the software and business consultants I work with have often chosen to consult because they enjoy being involved in leading change in an organization. But while they’re all attracted to the idea of change, there are a variety of different change styles amongst them, and so they prefer different timeframes for their changes, and different degrees of change. The key to enjoying your change and remaining motivated, focused and productive throughout your change is in knowing your own natural preference when it comes to the frequency and degree of change you have in your life, and then designing your work- and lifestyle around that.

So here’s how you can identify your preferred change style:

Start by asking yourself the question:

“What’s the relationship between my life this year and my life last year?

Write down your answer as a complete sentence. You will have answered in one of four ways, which will indicate your preferred change style as follows:

1. You described only what’s different about last year and this year, you said that they’re totally different, or you didn’t understand the question: You’re a REVOLUTIONARY

• What this means about you: You love change, new experiences and risk. You’re drawn to projects that are described as “cutting edge, unique, pioneering, a first in the industry, unconventional, dynamic.” You love to be thrown in the deep-end and you do best when you think on your feet. You learn quickly and you have a diverse range of interests, knowledge and skills. You’re very good at questioning assumptions and innovating new ways of being and doing.
• Your preferred frequency of change: You’re a revolutionary. You like change and you like it often and big. You like a major life change once every 3 to 12 months, and you love lots of little change in between.
• Your dark side: You can be a bit impatient with the other people who are less comfortable with change or make change more slowly than you. Because change is so easy for you, you can come across as unsentimental or uncaring, as though you’re “easy-come-easy-go.” And because you love change, you create change even when there isn’t necessarily a need for it, so you can be seen (by people with other preferred change styles) as a bit of a drama queen, and if unchecked you’ll start wasting resources on re-inventing the wheel or fixing stuff that’s not broken. You can tend to mess up on the details, because you’re not big on details.
• You’re well-suited to: consulting on short projects, leading change, getting start-ups off the ground and moving on, dreaming up ideas for start-ups, the traveling location independent lifestyle with frequent re-locations.

2. You described some ways that the two years are totally different and some ways that this year is similar to last year, only “more/ less of this or that” than last year was: you’re a combination of REVOLUTIONARY and EVOLUTIONARY

• What this means about you: You love to dream up possibilities, and big visions. You’re creative, intuitive and positive, and full of big ideas. You love to research new arenas and create proposals for pioneering ways forward. And you’re great at creating strategies and roadmaps for making your ideas a reality.
• Your preferred frequency of change: You like a major life change once every 9 to 18 months, and you need daily, incremental progress in between, to keep stimulated and interested in what you’re doing.
• Your dark side: While you’re great at dreaming up visions and creating strategies, you can tend to get bored when it comes to designing tactics and managing the implementation part. You can tend to over-research stuff and avoid actually ever doing anything with your ideas and dreams because you love playing, researching and discovering new things so much. You’re the person who makes elaborate dream boards and talks to everyone about your ideas, but often doesn’t get any further than that. You can also sometimes be a bit too positive and visionary, and overlook the risks and obstacles, so you’re not the best person to conduct risk assessments or trouble-shoot a project.
• You’re well-suited to: entrepreneurship, consulting on bigger projects that require an appreciation of complex interlinking systems, researching new territory, leading a change process, the commuting location independent lifestyle, or the traveling location independent lifestyle with less frequent re-locations.

3. You described how this year is more/ less of this or that than last year was: you’re an EVOLUTIONARY

• What this means about you: You’re a practical realist, and a good manager. You love to get stuff done, organize, tick boxes and achieve. You’re proactive and competent and you love to implement strategies and make stuff happen. You’re great with strategies, tactics and details, and you’re very good at setting up systems and processes.
• Your preferred frequency of change: You’re an evolutionary. You need daily incremental change and progress, and you like a major change once every 3 years or so.
• Your dark side: Your downfall is that you can struggle with big-thinking and creativity so, while you’re great at making big ideas happen, you’re less great at thinking outside the box and coming up with big ideas. You can tend to struggle with solving problems in entirely new ways, because you prefer to start with what already exists and improve on that. Because you tend to be very hands-on and focused on details, you can slip into mouse vision and find it difficult to see things from the perspective of eagle vision, and you can find it hard to let go of control and delegate.
• You’re well-suited to: Working from home as an entrepreneur who’s location independent, employment in a dynamic company that supports your continuous development and allows you flexibility to telecommute. If you travel as a location independent, you’ll probably be better suited to having a kitted-out traveling home that goes everywhere with you, such as an RV or boat.

4. You described only what’s the same about this year and last year or you said that they’re pretty much the same, and didn’t talk about anything that’s different: you’re a MAINTAINER

• What this means about you: You love to tweak and gently improve systems and details, and continuously de-bug and improve existing structures and ways of doing things. You’re great with trouble-shooting, editing and detail. You feel good when things are consistent and orderly. You’re loyal, reliable and predictable. You’re drawn to projects that can be described as, “tried-and-tested, reliable, robust, and continuing the tradition.”
• Your preferred frequency of change: You’ll go with a major life change only once every 10 years or so. You prefer maintenance over change.
• Your dark side: You can be the person who’s digging their heels in when change needs to happen, which can have a negative impact on team dynamics and productivity. Because you love to keep things all orderly and consistent, you can pass up great opportunities because they feel too scary or uncomfortable for you. Sometimes you resist change just because it’s change, even when the change is needed, so you can end up missing important opportunities.
• You’re well-suited to: The remote-living location independent lifestyle, or the work-from-home location independent lifestyle (especially if you have the stability and structure of working from home as an employee), although you might even find that these are still too much change for you and you prefer employment and a location dependent lifestyle where you can be a part of a structured system.

Bringing It Together

Once you’ve identifed your preferred change style, work at tailoring your environment and the nature of your work so that it suits your preferred style. Each of us can do all of the other styles to some degree, but you’ll always be happiest, most motivated and focused, and perform your best when you’re matching your lifestyle and work to your preferred change style.

The other thing to look out for is that all successful projects will move through these phases as they develop, so once you’ve found your change style, go and find other people who prefer the other change styles and collaborate with them. That way you can each do what you do best at the pace where you feel most comfortable, and leave the parts you don’t love and are less good at to the people who do love it and do it well.

So what’s your preferred change style? Do you need to make any changes to your lifestyle or work so that you can live your life according to your preferred change style?

19 August: Teleseminar, “How to Change Easily & Effortlessly”

I’m thrilled to be interviewing one of my biggest teachers in the field of NLP – Jamie Smart from Salad Ltd. We’re going to talk about change – what gets in the way of making your changes, dealing with internal resistance, understanding the roles of the conscious and unconscious minds in change, and we’ll cover some tools and tactics you can apply to be able to get more comfortable with change, and change more easily and effortlessly… and to live a more Agile life.

So if there’s anything you want to change in your life, have a high-change traveling lifestyle, or if you’re a leader or change catalyst, or if you work in a high-change environment, make sure you join this call! Click here for details.

Photo by FJTU

If you enjoyed this post, you might like to subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed or hang out with me on Twitter.