How To Adapt to a New Workplace

A guide to the four seasons of learning to fit in

Humans are the most adaptable species on the planet. Your ability to align with your environment is something you probably take for granted. Yet it is precisely what enables you to function so well even in the ever-changing reality of the 21st century.

Those changes — especially in your odyssey years — include switching jobs more often than any other generation did before. It may be a standard procedure for you to adapt to the new workplace by now. Or maybe, you are feeling lost and questioning how to fit in this new working environment.

In both cases, you can choose to adapt to your new workplace more smoothly by bringing more awareness to this process. After having worked 10 different jobs by the age of 28, I realized that each adaptation period usually goes through similar phases. If you know what they are, you can choose to move through them more deliberately.

As a consequence, you become a well-fitted part of your workplace, without losing your core. And sooner than you think, you may even become the leader of change.

Let me guide you through it.

The Hardest Part While Adapting is to Remain True to Yourself

My experience of switching jobs was quite intense over the past four years.

After I graduated in 2015, I moved between Poland, Scotland, and France in search of my life path. This included working in many places, juggling languages, work colleagues, and arrays of responsibilities that changed rapidly and frequently.

I went from a travel agency copywriter to social work to interacting with hundreds of clients in a busy summer restaurant to working with remote teams from home. On the way, I realized that the adaptation to each of these jobs happened according to a similar pattern. As I changed my environments faster than I changed internally as a person, I noticed something interesting.

Even when the core of my being felt unchanged to me, on the outside, I displayed dramatically different behaviours and personality traits. They primarily depended on the environment I found myself in.

This made me start asking questions about the balance between staying true to myself and remaining agile enough to fit it. How could I nurture my authentic self-expression, while also fitting in with my context, values of the people around me, and work commitments?

“The secret to success is knowing where to fit in, and how to stand out. It is fundamental to making a contribution and having a real impact; it lies at the heart of your sense of belonging, as well as your ability to be distinctive and receive recognition and appreciation. Know your own way to fit in and stand out.” — Caroline Purkhardt, Stillness in Action

How Intentional Adaptation Happens

So, how do you find the balance between fitting in and standing out?

Successful accommodation to change requires you to internalize the rules of a new environment — without having to compromise your most important values. To achieve that, you first need to become a good observer.

When entering a new workplace, you will most certainly witness some of your behaviour shifting to match the scene. That’s because it is virtually impossible to act the same, regardless of the circumstances and people around you.

You are not stronger than your environment.

I believe that, on some level, we are actually one with our environment. That’s the notion on which the theory that you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with is built. You are prone to replicating their routines, their language, and their beliefs. Similarly, you are likely to eat foods that are most accessible, use the devices that are handed to you, and even align your mood with the vibe of your surroundings.

Everything impacts you in one way or another, whether you are aware of it or not. This is why you should be considerate about the circumstances you put yourself into. But it’s also important to be observant about how the new environment impacts you once you’re already in it.

Observation is the prerequisite to standing out while fitting in.

The process of adapting to the changes in your life — including new jobs — is never-ending. I see it as a cyclical experience. It always begins with being thrown into the unknown, and — if you go through the cycle with sufficient awareness — concludes with you going out of it grown and more mature.

Only then can you open yourself to the next change which awaits you just around the corner.

From this angle, it doesn’t really matter whether you were successful, or whether you liked your new workplace. You can always learn a valuable lesson through the process of adapting — as long as you pay attention to what is going on.

Let me walk you through the adaption cycle as I experienced it in my many jobs. For the sake of better understanding the cyclical nature of it, I will use the metaphor of the natural seasons.

For the sake of confusion, I will order them backwards.

Stage I (Spring): Enjoying Being a Beginner

The key qualities of this stage are exploring, observance, play, enjoyment, and openness. It is the beginning phase of a growth cycle, just like the one a tree goes through in spring, when it produces its first leaves and stems.

When you arrive in a new workplace, what you encounter first are… a lot of unfamiliar experiences and impressions. Enjoy this exciting part of your new life chapter!

This experience of freshness can be quite a gift when you are starting a new job. All the details of your daily life are suddenly different. The way to operate the coffee machine is initially unknown — and it takes your conscious attention to learn it. There is a new co-worker sitting next to you, to whom you don’t yet know how to relate.

Every little experience you enter at this stage brings something new, and this can be exciting!

The delightful aspect of this stage is that it allows you to adopt the “attitude of a beginner” naturally. This frees you from the habitual judgements and set ideas about your circumstances. You look at everything with a fresh eye — because you simply don’t know how things work here yet. You can’t have a preconceived idea about how people should behave or what is supposed to be happening.

The advantage of this situation is that you naturally become more rooted in the present moment. Your mind is not yet familiar with the setup and therefore cannot expect what will happen next. Observing your circumstances as they unfold is the most beneficial thing you can do at this point.

To make the best of this precious opportunity to observe, you may want to focus on the following aspects of your work experience.

1. Learn about the social norms in the new group of people. Anywhere you go, there is something different about how people behave in a group and what is considered socially acceptable. People at your workplace may talk to each other in a peculiar slang — or maybe they’re used to a specific time to drink coffee together? Take your time to explore the established group habits and ask questions. This is a much gentler approach than interfering with the well-established norms in your workplace from day one.

2. Explore physical surroundings. Whenever you enter a new office, neighbourhood, or country, it always takes a bit of time and cognitive resources to learn how to move around a space you don’t know. It can be a lot of fun if you approach it as a game. Where are the dishes stored in the common kitchen, and at what time of day does sunlight enter the room? How to get from room 301 to 345, and whose offices do you pass by? What to wear to be comfortable within the new space, weather, and while performing new tasks? Approach such explorations with a beginner’s mind, and they will become a fun mindfulness practice.

3. Design your new daily routine. Whatever new job you are adapting to, your routines may need adjusting. Maybe you need to start getting up earlier in order to reach your new workplace on time? Or your go-to lunch option changes, just because the new cafeteria offers different foods? Approach the re-establishment of your daily routines as an act of creation and self-expression. You may even find it to be a great opportunity to break the habits that don’t serve you anymore — such as smoking, overeating, or staying up late.

Stage II (Winter): Allowing the Discomfort

The key qualities of this stage are stepping into the unknown, being flexible, having the willingness to be vulnerable, but also — to change. In this stage, you are akin to a tree during wintertime — naked, exposed, and, to a certain extent, uncomfortable. Surviving winter is essential for a tree to renew and be able to bear new leaves and stems later on in spring.

Welcome to the unknown. After the first wave of excitement and discovery have passed, you are likely to realize the uncomfortable thoughts and emotions your new environment triggers.

Suddenly, it all feels challenging and out of your comfort zone. Pay attention, because the way in which you handle the challenge will condition your further experience within that particular environment.

First of all, you need to accept that making a change in your life always implies taking a certain dose of discomfort in. And the discomfort arises not because this new job is not for you, after all or you aimed too high, and now you cannot cope.

These are just stories your mind produces to explain the discomfort away.

The real reason your discomfort is surfacing is that you are facing situations you are not accustomed to. There may be something about your new work setup that challenges your ego, which naturally reacts by trying to maintain the old status quo.

Maybe you need to face criticism you were not used to before, and this triggers insecurity. Or you are suddenly thrown into a new role — such as moving from a follower to leader position (or vice versa).

A change of this kind may not please your ego simply because it’s used to a certain identity from the past — and it will do everything it can to keep clinging to it. However, you are much more than just your ego and must, therefore, understand that identifying with your circumstances doesn’t express the true essence of your being.

As your work position changes, your identity inevitably undergoes a transformation. The discomfort triggered by it is a sign that the process is unfolding as required. In the language of self-improvement: This kind of discomfort means you’re growing.

Because emotional discomfort and mental confusion are inherent parts of any life change, the best thing you can do about them is … accept them without trying to interfere. Interference, in this case, would mean unconsciously reacting to the uncomfortable events, based on your outdated identity from the past.

I found that, often, the much better option than doing anything about your discomfort at a new workplace is… undoing. Observing, instead of reacting. Accepting that this is a necessary part of the process and without it, your experience would be incomplete.

During this challenging winter stage of adaption, your primary task is to simply invite the discomfort in. Be honest about what is going on. It may mean being vulnerable and telling your co-workers that you are not yet at ease with your new tasks. Or asking for help when you need it. It may mean getting lost in editing an assignment for hours, just to find out that it has been already submitted to a client.

In short, going through the winter is allowing yourself to feel the discomfort without believing in the mental stories that something is wrong — either with you or with the people around. Winter is about learning how to be at peace with the discomfort.

Once you grasp this, you are coming home. You know how to deal with your most serious obstacle — which is yourself. From that point on, you start trusting that you can take on pretty much anything in your new environment.

Which, by the way, is not so new to you anymore.

Stage III (Autumn): Feeling at Home

This is the stage marked by appreciation and gratitude, the feeling of homecoming and seeing the results of your work. It is akin to autumn, when fruits are ripening on trees and when time and space are opening for you to relax and enjoy the results of your work. It’s harvest time.

I have always noticed the first day I felt at home in my new workplace — which didn’t seem so new anymore once I made myself at home. Take note of this special moment, too. You’ve come a long way to arrive here.

This is when you start growing roots in your new environment. You may now acknowledge how adaptable you are and how much you have learned since you decided to take this particular step in your career. You also start forming bonds with the people around you — and discover what’s in these relationships for you.

You feel increasingly at ease with the physical space. You own it. You know where certain objects and utilities belong. You also found your ways around the area, such as how to get to work or your favourite cafeteria.

What’s really your task at this point is allowing the natural gratitude and appreciation to flow through your experience. Acknowledge yourself for going through all the difficult moments so far. Acknowledge others, too, for being who they are: your companions in this chapter of your life.

The gratitude and appreciation are very important elements of the whole process because they allow you to establish a lasting sense of ease, self-love, and confidence. And those will be very useful once you’re ready to take charge of the role you play in your workplace by starting to actively impact it.

But first — recognize where you currently stand within the whole setup. This is the time to ask yourself questions and wait for the answers with your eyes and ears wide open.

What is the most important quality you bring into the equation?

What role are you currently playing within the established system?

What kind of support do you need from the people around you?

What do you think those people need from you?

What do you like about your workplace as it is now?

What would you like to change?

Now that you are grounded in your new environment—with human bonds growing and a sense of ease and appreciation established — you are ready to take deliberate action. Acting from the place of feeling at ease (rather than defending yourself) allows you to authentically influence the reality with your unique self-expression.

You are beginning to stand out while fitting in.

Stage IV (Summer): Impacting Your Workplace

The final stage of adaption is at the same time a beginning of a new endeavour. After you grew strong and understood the environment you are in, you became prepared to act. The grounds are ready, and the climate is perfect — just like in the summer, when all the natural conditions reach their peak and create the optimal environment for a tree to blossom and set a new cycle of life in motion.

From this point on, you are not merely absorbing the environment around you. In fact, by now you have probably finished the process of adapting yourself to your workplace. This means you are ready for adapting the workplace to yourself, as a way of introducing the change you want to see in the world.

It doesn’t need to be about big words and big actions at all. You don’t need to reorganize the structure of the company you are working for. You don’t need to become a workplace activist.

Your shift to standing out while fitting in can be way more subtle.

It’s as simple as that: You no longer see yourself as a mere product of your environment. Instead, you are an active co-creator of it. Anything you do or don’t do contributes to the overall state of the workplace(or any environment, for that matter) that you function in.

You either smile to your colleagues first thing in the morning — or you don’t.

You either work with care and passion — or you don’t.

You either hurry through your day, focused on reaching the end — or you take your time to stop, connect with the people around you, and appreciate what they do.

It is always about how you choose to be in any moment that is given to you. If you care to slowly but gradually transform the reality you’re a part of — you will make a difference.

After you know the rules and learn how to follow them — it’s time to either break or change them. Because you know how the system functions, you are now empowered to impact it.

And anything you do will have an impact — as long as you care.