I’ve initiated a number of personnel changes in my companies over the last couple of days, all of which are internal moves designed to improve our ability to make it easier for our clients to do business with us. Much to my delight, everyone involved met the opportunities with a clean, vibrant and enthusiastic first flush of feeling!

The nature of your first flush of feeling in any new circumstance determines in large measure the likelihood of your success. You’ve likely known people whose initial reaction to anything new is three parts reluctance and one part appreciation. Fearful of change and desperate to control everything around them, people in the habit of saying “no!” to any new opportunity prefer to live lives that constrain to nothingness and emptiness instead of moving gracefully with the newness and freshness of life’s constantly changing winds.

I hope for your sake that you’ve been exposed to people who take an opposite tack. Rather than throwing a wet blanket over anything new, the uncommonly generative person welcomes new opportunity – no matter how it comes packaged – with an open and appreciate mind and heart. Such a person seems to float effortlessly above the inevitable waves and turbulence that either precede or follow the frontal system that ushered in the change. If you watch carefully, such a person ends up as an agent of change, rather than its unwitting and unfortunate victim.

It is so refreshing to be surrounded by people whose greatest delight is to grow and learn. They, like everyone, get butterflies or at least experience a heightened state of awareness when the winds of change begin to blow, but they, unlike most people, are exceptionally careful to channel that “free” energy released when things begin to change into constructive, forward-thinking, creative and expansive thought and action.

Take note of your first flush of feeling. Be honest about it. Giving any weight to the spirits of negativity or futility can irreversibly taint an otherwise perfect response to a new and delicate sprout of opportunity and retraining bad habits formed around this central area of function can improve your ability to move graciously with the uncertainties inherent in the world today more than just about any other change you can make, inner or outer. Don’t be a Bitter Betty!