3 Easy Ways to Embrace Hard Changes: Empathize, Experiment, Iterate
By: Valeria Kanziuba
Tags: Designyourlife, Design Practice, Empathy, Design Thinking, Design Principles

When I moved to California from Ukraine in 2014 with my family of six, my whole world was turned upside down.

I remember standing in the San Jose Whole Foods just one week after unpacking all of our bags and feeling so overwhelmed by it all. The size of the grocery store, the different value system, the cost of everything.

Staring at the chicken thighs in the butcher section, debating between bone-in or out, organic or not, I realized I was a long way from my familiar life in Kyiv, Ukraine. Back home, I knew everything inside-out: the name of my local butcher, where to buy good clothes at an affordable price, how to guarantee my kids would thrive at school. Back home, two pounds of chicken thighs cost the equivalent of $4 US Dollars, not $19.

We’d always wanted to live in the United States. But now that we were here, America didn’t just feel like another country to me — it felt like another world. And I was having a tough time adjusting. I was resisting the big changes, finding ways to say “no” instead of embracing an open mindset of “yes”.

I recall the first Saturday my kids asked if they could go to the neighborhood park and play with their friends. “We have things to do at home,” I said. In Ukraine, most people take advantage of Saturdays and Sundays to do housework or get ahead of their studies. So for the first few months, I refused friendly invitations to family BBQs or classmate playdates. Instead, my kids studied Russian and Ukrainian on Sundays, between dance classes and science tutoring (by yours truly).

Empathizing with my family — and myself

After a few months, I had to admit that my children seemed unhappy, and I couldn’t ignore that I was stressed. So my husband and I sat down with our kids to talk about their recent experiences with the goal to listen and to learn. They told us they were frustrated living a Ukrainian lifestyle in America. That it felt like doing one dance move while their partner was doing the opposite. I also felt like I was going against the wind. I couldn’t stop comparing my new life to the one I’d known for almost 40 years. But my old frame of reference had no relevance here.

A small experiment, and a big ‘aha’

Eventually, my kids pushed back on Sunday studies and my husband and eldest daughter proposed we drive into San Francisco instead. I was a little nervous piling the family into the van. But my husband turned up the music and together we crossed the bridge. In the rearview mirror, I saw all four kids smiling.

I realized right then they’d still get their homework done. That I’d still get to work that Monday on time. That change wasn’t all that hard itself — but my resistance to change had made it feel almost impossible.

I couldn’t find my groove in the United States because I was clinging to my old ways. If I could accept — and even embrace — the new reality, I could move with life instead of fight against it.

Iterating as we go

The drive across the bridge was a small step, a little experiment. But it worked for us.

From that point on, I was more open to trying new things and making adjustments as necessary. Maybe the next drive we’d go to dinner in the city and come home a little later. Maybe we’d go somewhere else entirely.

Slowly but surely, my family and I began to embrace the differences in American culture, ultimately creating a new way of life that we all now love.

Photo by Kid Circus on Unsplash

2020 has posed challenges for everyone

I share this story now because 2020 has been a year of unprecedented challenges and change for all. Between the civil unrest in America, the approaching election, the West Coast wildfires, and a global pandemic, we’ve all been forced to live differently.

But rather than embrace all of these changes to create something new, I’ve witnessed a lot of painful resistance.

As professionals work remotely, many regularly express their struggles. They’re feeling less connected to their colleagues. They’re having a harder time collaborating. They’re frustrated sharing their workspace with partners and kids. All of these complaints are valid and understandable. But we also need to consider the benefits of remote work. We have more flexibility in how to plan our days, and families get to spend more time with their kids. So what systems can we design to solve the pain points we’re experiencing while preserving what’s actually improved in our lives?

As kids go “back to school” through distance learning, teachers are having a hard time educating through a screen, and students are having difficulty staying engaged. Traditional classroom thinking hasn’t been rethought for over 100 years, and it’s not enough to simply move the old ways online. So what can we do to reimagine what education looks like moving forward?

As we gear up for an election where in-person voting is a health risk, there are endless debates about mail-in voting. How can we rethink this process for future elections to ensure every vote is valid, and counted?

Photo by Joel Filipe on Unsplash

I don’t pretend to know how we should reshape the future. But I do know that clinging to the old days and old ways will only lead to suffering and setbacks. Sometimes it takes a shocking change — or even a crisis — to reflect on our current reality and create and embrace something better and new.

Like my Sunday drive, we can start with small experiments. We can listen and learn from our community members like I listened and learned from my family. We can iterate on whatever changes we make — keeping what works, dumping the rest, and trying something new to improve.

Because the truth is, we’re designing and redesigning our lives every day. And as uncomfortable as constraints may feel at first, we can’t view them as handcuffs; we have to choose to see them as guardrails that can help us think creatively within limits.

We’ve all gone through significant changes in our lives — especially recently. I invite you to think about how you can apply empathy, experimentation, iteration, and creative constraints as you confront the next big challenge in your life. I also invite you to share what you’ve learned to help the rest of us navigate and embrace inevitable challenges and change.