It’s autumn and the trees here in West Michigan are “doing their thing” and showing us all sorts of amazing color as they transform from summery green to blazing hues of ginger, red and gold. Earlier this week, I wrote about how trees probably don’t fret about the annual changes they go through.
Humans, however, are a different story. Our lives aren’t as predictably cyclical as those of deciduous trees. So, I offered a three-part process to help people process their internal reactions to an external change.
When I was out for a walk yesterday, I happened upon this tableau:
Check it out: three trees, standing together, in various phases of a change.
Tree on the right – in the “orientation” phase – not a whole of lot of color change, still in the previous mode of summer. Just a tip of orange to show that the transition has begun.
Tree on the left – in the “chaos” phase of becoming a new color. There’s some green, some light orange and some fully developed orange.
Tree in the middle – has reached the “assimilation” phase – it is fully transitioned to its glorious autumnal hue.
Food for Thought –
Are you going through an organizational change in your life at the moment? Which tree best represents your internal mindset to the change?
Reflect on a change that you went through in the past that was particularly difficult. What made it so? How long did it take you to move from “very green” to “in full autumnal color”?
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