Why Change Often Drains Your Energy (and How to Get It Back)

Ever notice how some changes leave you feeling energized and capable while others leave you exhausted and overwhelmed? What creates this difference? Why do some uncertainties feel like exciting challenges while others trigger that familiar "Oh FUD!" — fear, uncertainty, and doubt — spiral?

The truth is that when change hits, our brains tend to immediately scan for threats in an effort to keep us safe. This negativity bias served our ancestors well when survival depended on spotting dangers quickly, but in modern workplaces, this same instinct to urgently fix problems can make sustaining our energy for change more exhausting than it needs to be.

For example, research by David Cooperrider and colleagues (including myself) suggests that most workplaces spend about 80% of their effort addressing our weaknesses (the things we are not good at) and only 20% building on our strengths (the things we are wired to do well). Yet when we flip this ratio, we often see better individual and collective outcomes with far less energy expenditure. Why? Because our strengths represent the ways we are wired to perform at our best.

Try these three simple strengths development practices to help energize your change approaches:

1. Discover Your Strengths. Build awareness of your individual strengths and your team's collective capabilities. This isn't about false confidence or positive thinking. It's about a realistic assessment of your existing capabilities and resources. Recognizing your strengths creates the foundation your brain needs to feel safe enough to engage with uncertainty.

Try this: Ask yourself, "What lights me/us up at work?", "When do I/we feel the most engaged and energized?", “Which strengths are we drawing on in these moments?” These questions can help identify strengths that could support you through change.

2. Align Your Strengths. Break big challenges into smaller tasks and identify where your existing strengths can be applied. Instead of viewing change as something that requires you to be completely different, look for ways to use what already works to address new challenges. When this alignment happens, you often experience what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow" — that state in which you lose track of time and feel energized by the work itself.

Try this: Look at an energy-draining task on your to-do list related to current changes. Ask yourself, "What strength could I draw on to approach this differently?" Turn that overwhelming "to-do" into an energizing "tah-dah" by aligning your strengths to your tasks.

3. Develop Your Strengths. Even our best qualities can work against us if we use them at the wrong intensity for the context. For example, if one of your strengths is attention to detail, there are times during change when dialing this up serves you well (reviewing important contracts) and times when dialing it down helps you move forward (initial brainstorming sessions). Learning to modulate your strengths based on what each situation requires can help you to stay energized rather than exhausted.

Try this: At the end of each day, take a few minutes for an "Appreciation Lap." Reflect on what went well and which strengths you drew upon. Notice where you struggled and consider whether you might have been underplaying or overplaying certain capabilities and any adjustments you might want to make tomorrow. This builds the self-awareness needed to fine-tune your approach.

This approach isn't about avoiding problems or ignoring what needs fixing. It's about making strategic choices with your finite energy for navigating changes. When you build on what you're good at and enjoy doing, align those capabilities with the challenges you're facing, and stay flexible about how you use them, you create the conditions your brain needs to shift from exhausted survival mode to energized engagement.

How can you use your strengths to help your brain feel safer and more energized during your current workplace changes?

To learn more about creating thriving workplaces, listen to The Leaders Lab podcast. Want to see how you're currently experiencing change? Try the free survey tool to identify where you might need more support.