What is the key quality you must have for a successful work search, career change, job search or entrepreneurial project? It’s the ability to adapt. Knowing how to adapt to the new landscape of a work transition is a basic survival skill. Your resilience, resourcefulness and positive perspective are vital to a winning strategy. Whether your work life changes are by choice or circumstance, you can manage through them well— and achieve your goals.

Look to nature for inspiration. Adaptation is a fascinating evolutionary process. It is “any change in the structure or functioning of an organism that makes it better suited to its environment.” (The Oxford Dictionary of Science)

Plants and animals survive in the harshest environments only because they’ve changed to better live in their habitats.

If you haven’t tuned into the Discovery Channel’s new 11-part series, Life, you’re in for a real treat. Beautifully produced over four years with great care, it dramatically shows “the extraordinary strategies” animals and plants have developed to survive. This series is really amazing, a must-see!

How can you best adapt to changes in your work life?

1.  Stay resilient. It’s not easy to stay strong, flexible and undaunted when staring into the unknown. Good news—you can prevail over the negative influences of worry and discouragement. To start, don’t indulge the gloom.

Know that the challenges you face are manageable. Know that you have both the inner and outer resources to deal ably with problems and opportunities. Entertain new career options. Know that you will find the right solutions.

2.  Maintain a positive perspective. Your starting point—you are capable, talented, qualified and experienced. Never stray from that central place of self-confidence and self-reliance. Expect success.

3.  Take purposeful, focused action. Do what you can to move toward your goals, although you may feel you have little control over circumstances. We’ve talked a lot about the benefit of action plans in previous posts. One of these benefits is that a plan keeps you moving, gives you a sense of accomplishment, builds self-confidence.

Call on your amazing resilience to survive and flourish. It’s your inherent nature, something you share with all life on this fantastic planet.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. -Charles Darwin, English biologist (1809 - 1882)

Today’s question

How have you adapted to changes in your work life? Helpful tips?

Please watch for upcoming posts on how to build resilience—tools and useful strategies.