What Moving Reminded Me About Leading Through Change

My family changed addresses last week.

Although it can be rather intense, some people love the process of moving because it's an opportunity to purge things you no longer need and prepare for something new.

I'll admit I enjoyed the purging process, with the small exception of going through my cabinets filled with my beloved mugs in the kitchen.

(I mean, what's the line between collector and hoarder when it comes to things like that?)

But I digress.

I want to talk about the preparation for something new.

For me, it wasn't simply about a new address. It was also going from a household of five (six when you include our beagle) to a household of three, just me, my husband, and our youngest daughter who has unique needs.

I've known this day was coming and knew there would be new dynamics at play, but I've found that you can't fully prepare for something you don't have experience with.

Yes, you can ask for advice. You can pray or meditate about it. You can do some of the groundwork.

But oftentimes you just have to embrace it and know you'll figure out some of it later.

What I know for sure is that I can't take what worked in the past and assume it's the solution for now and the future. It’s only been six days since the move, and I’m already seeing some things I'll be adjusting in the weeks ahead.

My change came with weeks of packing boxes, graduation celebrations, and a countdown I could see coming from a mile away.

Yours might come with a Monday morning phone call you didn't see coming at all.

It’s a different runway, yet the same reality once you land.

Like when you lose a key employee without warning.

Or a personal emergency disrupts everything overnight.

Or your biggest client gets acquired, and the new owners cut ties within a month, and 30% of your revenue disappears with zero notice.

These are not the moments to panic and react your way through it. These are the moments to lean into the power of grace. The first and foundational pillar in The Grace Effect framework is Ground.

Ground doesn't mean pretending you're not rattled. It means creating margin, even just thirty minutes, for what I call a Wisdom Meeting; a standing appointment to get still, seek, and listen before you decide anything. It's choosing stillness long enough to access wisdom you simply don't have on your own and receive the rational, emotional, and spiritual clarity that your busiest thinking simply cannot manufacture on the spot.

Then you can make a strategically aligned decision and refine whatever needs changing.

Because whether you had months of warning or none at all, you can't fully prepare for something you've never lived through before. What you can do is choose how you enter it. Reactive or receptive.

If you're somewhere in the middle of your own version of this, take five minutes and go through ROOTED. It's free, and it'll give you an honest picture of where you're steady and where you're running on fumes (perhaps without even realizing it).