Change is All About Perspective

What’s the difference between seeing a change as negative or positive?

Your world view. Your attitude.

The only thing you have 100% control over is your attitude. Everything else happens around us, happens to us, but each day we wake up and we get to make a choice about what kind of attitude we have. Some of you who know me know the most significant personal change I’ve had to incorporate into my life was losing my 14-year-old daughter. For two years, she was on a heart transplant list; we lived on cell phones and pagers. I always knew that if anyone was going to get a heart, a 14-year-old girl was going to be at the very top of the list. Two years later, we just ran out of time. This was the only thing in my life I couldn’t buy or problem solve my way out of.

When we left children’s hospital that day, my wife Kathleen and I sat at a water fountain and had a conversation about what we were going to do. The first thing was to figure out this organ donor thing. It’s a country club that I couldn’t gain admittance too and I wanted to help someone in a similar position. The second thing was to figure out how to give back to all of the people who helped us while going through this. And there were a ton. Today, Kathleen is the Bereavement Coordinator at Children’s Hospital and she works with parents who have lost children, or whose children have life threatening illnesses. This is a powerful personal example of change for me because I’ve had the opportunity to work with a ton of parents who’ve lost kids. I’ll say this: it messes some parents up a lot. Some don’t ever get over it. You’ll never get over it but there is a really great way to grieve. You can honor that child.

There are really bad ways to grieve and they’re going to cause you a lifetime of pain, but you consciously have to decide which road you’re going to travel.

On a humorous note, my daughter’s report card was sent to our house while she was in the hospital. She got a D in science. Now, I’m a task master and I looked at that and thought to myself, “This is totally unacceptable, I don’t care if you’re in the hospital; we’re not getting D’s in this family.” I called her and said, “Brittany, I’m going to be in there about 4:00 today and we’re going to come up with a game plan for science.”

I got there about 4:00 and I’ll never forget a wonderful nurse, Karen, met me at the door and said, “You need to back off a little bit because she’s been sweating it out all day, and you’re the reason why. She and I already have a plan, and we don’t need your help.”

I walked in and said, “Let’s hear it, what’s the plan?” Brittany looked up and said, “We don’t wish any one ill will, but we’ve all decided that if this science teacher was to pass before I did, we want her heart. Because we want one that hasn’t been used a whole lot.”

I end with one word; the only thing we truly have control over: Attitude.

Content taken from Peter B. Stark’s Keynote, Surviving and Thriving through Organizational Change. Watch clips from this keynote in the player below: