Ever notice how some people like change and others don’t?

If you still wish Motorola made the original bag phone, you might not be an early adopter.

If you still drive your car from the 80’s because you’re suspicious of automobiles run by “computers”, you might not be an early adopter.

If everyone has IT before you do, you might not be an early adopter.

If it’s not broke don’t fix it, you might not be an early adopter.

If you think the internet is still a fad, you might not be an early adopter.

I’m not saying that every change is a good one but I do know it’s hard to make progress in anything if we mistrust the necessity of change. Change is the great leveller and, in my mind gives us a glimpse into how we are really doing in different areas of our lives.

Want to find out a person’s character? Watch them navigate a change they weren’t expecting. Everyone tends to run home to momma when faced with something new… momma being two things we don’t often think might be the problem: our own way of thinking and our character.

We’ve had our share of change to figure out this year as a family and also doing a church startup, and I’ve been able to watch how different types of people have handled it. To have to adjust to new people and schools and situations where you don’t know the rules is always hard, but harder for some than others.

Then there are people like Neela. Just about the time we were feeling settled she pipes up “Dad, we should move EVERY year!!!” (At which point Ailish had four simultaneous heart attacks:)

Neela Loves meeting new people! If there were new people in her class every day she’d love it (also probably not notice)! She’s in it for the fun.

Not so some of my other girls, they were just getting comfortable here…

I wonder how many opportunities we miss in business because change disrupts our courage? And yet the leaders I know seem to be able to thrive in chaos and get a result when most of us are so upset by the unexpected we miss the opportunity it brings.

Enter the innovators and early adopters of The Diffusion of Innovation fame (Everett Rogers). They just see the world differently! What sucks the wind out of us energizes them!

If I’m going through a season of challenge and change, I need these types of dreamers around me. Life is hard enough without hearing a negative person at the wrong time. I’ve actually noticed that you could pitch the best idea in the world to a negative person and they’ll immediately tell you six ways it won’t work.

Who cares how many doors you knock on? You only need one to open!

I think some of us are just wired with an ability to spend more energy NOT believing in people or new ideas, and then having to come up with all sorts of reasons to back up why we feel the way we do. I’d rather attempt something great than look back and wish I had, it’s almost a paranoia that drives me.

Another type of person I’ve noticed is someone who is originally energized by change but lacks the discipline to see it through to the finish line. How many shortcuts are there really in life? How many lotteries can a person win? It doesn’t work like that for most of us.

I think we need those people in our communities, businesses and churches who see the world through the eyes of promise and the future. We need to give them room to dream of a world where wrongs are made right and people reach their destinies. We need to allow the stagnation in us to be identified and sometimes embarrassed, so we can have a laugh and move on to something worthwhile.

We need them to help us quit fighting the inevitability of change and roll with it. The way we run the race might predict whether we finish or not, but so might WHO we run with.

Here’s what I know…

Change is inevitable, growth is optional. (John Maxwell)

I’m going to run the race with dreamers.