When feeling stuck: accept it, change it, or leave it

Whatever choice we make, there's no going back, so even when there's internal conflict and struggle, I try to focus on the next action, letting those emotions go more quickly so I can look forward.

During a recent team event, one of our executives was sharing his thoughts when he casually mentioned a principle he follows: when facing any situation, either accept it, change it, or leave it—make the decision quickly so you can keep moving forward.

Though he said it lightheartedly, even joking that "this is why I'm often late to things—I'm always trying to change this or that," the phrase left a deep impression on me. I realized I've been unconsciously practicing this approach in my work and life. This mindset has helped me reduce a lot of internal struggle and anxiety by shifting my focus to action.

Choosing to "accept It"

Sometimes we can't change the situation and leaving isn't realistic, we need to accept it and adapt.

When I started one of my jobs, I learned that I was going to redesign a product that’s in a domain with highly technical complexity, launch a new version with almost no knowledge of the product, and an extremely tight timeline. I couldn't change the urgency, or the deadline, and leaving wasn't an option, so I chose to accept the situation.

Knowing I was going to be in this for several tough months, I focused on learning as quickly as possible, doing my work well and efficiently, and catching up with the team's pace. Through this process, I established my footing and helped everyone achieve our goals. Eventually, I succeeded and earned the team's trust.

I find myself "accepting the current state" frequently in daily parenting too. Since we're raising our child by just the two of us and want to keep things relatively relaxed, we pick our battles. For many small things, I just let her be, saying "okay, go ahead". We focus on the big stuff—safety and things we consider truly important. I've written quite a bit about our parenting approaches before.

Choosing to "push for change"

When we have the ability to drive change and believe it's worth the effort, we choose to change it.

I encountered this situation at work during a project where the people responsible insisted on releasing something with obvious user experience flaws—like technical terms users may not understand at all. This created several potential problems: users would need to spend a long time learning the product, or they might not find the right entry points to use it properly.

I communicated with them directly several times but kept getting pushed back —"We know these terms cause problems, but the team made final decisions before you joined. They can't be changed. If modifications are needed, we'll address them after launch." My fellow supporting designer and I escalated this to our design leadership. We then formed an action plan: despite the tight project timeline, we carved out two to three weeks to conduct research with internal target users, gathering data that confirmed users indeed couldn't understand these technical terms. We also gave the main project points of contact a heads-up about our research.

Later, at a higher-level design review meeting, when we presented our findings and data, the reviewing executive quickly agreed with our assessment, acknowledged that some terms were difficult to understand, and suggested alternative names. After that, those who had previously insisted "the terms can't be changed" completely shifted their attitude and actively contributed ideas during the brainstorming session I organized afterward. Ultimately, we were able to change the problematic terms before the project launch.

As the user experience designer on the team, if I had done nothing when I first noticed the UX problems, it would have meant silently accepting those flaws. That was unacceptable to me, so I pushed for change. I also realized that team members had varying levels of understanding about the importance of user experience, so I could do something to help improve their UX awareness. This later evolved into an almost annual tradition of UX knowledge sharing. Initially, I had to find the right moments to "squeeze in" these mini-presentations. Later, even after several team reorganizations, people started reaching out to ask me to share on this topic.

I think sometimes that desire to "make a small change" pushes certain things to happen, and in turn, these things push me to change even more. It's a really interesting cycle.

Choosing to "leave"

When the current situation is neither acceptable nor changeable, leaving might be the best choice. I've had a couple of experiences in my career that I still remember clearly to this day .

The first was when I had been at a job for over a year and felt I could no longer learn anything new there. Though I could have chosen to endure it for visa status reasons, I felt bored and unfulfilled, so I decided to leave.

Being a relatively new designer at the time, job hunting took me many months. I worked during the day and devoted my evenings entirely to finding new opportunities. After a long eight months, I finally found a job worth staying at for years, where I learned tremendously. Now I'm very grateful to my past self for making that decision to leave.

During another job hunt, there was a company that looked great on paper: overall good conditions and also could sponsor a green card quickly. However, when I interviewed there, the place felt lifeless. When I asked a senior designer why they stayed at the company, they said they thought it was stable and wouldn't lay people off. I was completely turned off by that mindset. I couldn't change a company I hadn't even joined yet, and I couldn't accept the company's state with peace of mind, so I turned down their offer. The next job I ultimately took was in an environment I absolutely loved, where I ended up working for a long time.

Reflection

From work to parenting to all aspects of our lives, when facing any situation, we might have internal standards. Sometimes we can adjust our standards to accept the current state, sometimes we want to change something to meet those standards, and sometimes we choose to leave.

Whatever choice we make, there's no going back, so even when there's internal conflict and struggle, I try to focus on the next action, letting those emotions go more quickly so I can look forward without distraction.

"Accept it, change it, or leave it."

I really like this simple summary.