At the heart of real change is transformation; change without transformation is manifesting a familiar pattern in a new context. Our capacity for making transformative changes is rooted in our free will, a transcendent attribute inherent in human nature. However, accessing our capacity for transformative change requires self-awareness. Our personal development and psychological constitution shape how we manage or avoid the process of change. Through self-awareness and transforming the patterns embedded in our developmentally-determined character, we can create opportunities to manifest our free will.
Topics in text below:
The Paradox of Change
Change Takes More than Making a Decision
Development of the Self for Growth and Transformation
The Paradox of Change
Transformative change requires a perspectival shift. The new view must come from outside the current patterns that are precluding the process of natural growth. One indicator of disruption in our natural rhythm for growth and change is feeling stuck. This sense of perpetual struggle without a perceptible change is often rooted in the paradox of change. The paradox of change sets up a potentially enduring trap with no easy exit. This is based in the bind: I cannot change until I am better, but I cannot be better until I change.
I can only change, when I am better,
But,
I can only become better, when I change.
We are constantly seeking ways to be better in order to act better; or, we continually struggle to act better in order to become better. Transformation must arise from outside of this bind. First, we must have the courage to accept that we cannot fundamentally change by oscillating between focusing on our actions or on our condition. Being better and acting better are both required simultaneously, and recursively. After this acceptance, we can utilize the power of free will that is activated when we focus on our Purpose and Commitment.
Change Takes More than Making a Decision
For real change to occur, we must transform and break free of our worldview. In the book Immunity to Change, Harvard developmental psychologist Robert Kegan, applies his model of developmental constructivism to the process of change. Constructivism sees reality as a socio-cultural construction. Psychologically, we are all locked into a worldview that reflects our development. Throughout our life, we build-up patterns of experience that create our deepest cognitive assumptions that, in turn, shape how we construct reality.
Problem areas in our lives arise when our predominant assumptions are not adaptive and remain outside of our awareness. Kegan holds that the surest way to get below those basic constricting assumptions is to identify the area in which we feel stuck. Generally, we are unable to make changes in areas where we are stuck without an understanding of the worldviews that hold us in place. Upon close examination, we can come to see the previously unconscious beliefs that have served to maintain the problematic behaviors. This process of delving into our problems must come from a perspective of curiosity rather than one of a quick fix.
Through a careful objective analysis of our behaviors, we can gain a clarity that reveals the assumptions underlying our worldview, allowing us to make the needed transformative changes in our life. For Kegan the examination begins and ends with observation of our behaviors. By observation of our behavior, we gain perspective on our beliefs and motivations with objectivity beyond that of insight-only self-reflection. In Immunity to Change, Robert Kegan states,
“When we are working on truly adaptive goals—ones that require us to develop our mindsets—we must continually convert what we learn from behavioral changes into changes in our mindsets. Nor is the work accomplished by just seeking insights, as empowering or clarifying as those insights might feel…People are struck by the self-understanding…but then they get mired in their thinking, analyzing and reflecting, with little inclination to act. Those who take this route may be operating on their personal, often tacit, theory of change, which champions self-awareness of one’s internal world. The presumption might be that understanding more and more deeply what motivates us is the means to change, or that untangling our thinking is key.”
Development of the Self for Growth and Transformation
The foundation of Kegan’s model of change is rooted in the distinction between adaptation and technical change. Adaptation is a type of change, more like a transformation, based on a deep exploration of our respective blind spots, our assumptions of how the world works, and our constructions derived from that assumption. This transformative view of change emerges out of Robert Kegan’s constructivist developmental psychology, which sees people as constructing their world. We do not find meaning in the circumstances themselves; rather, we organize the events of life into a meaningful narrative about reality.
The capacity to realize that our view of reality is a construction is a major developmental achievement. In Kegan’s developmental model, we advance through levels of subjective reality toward increasing objectivity. At each transition point, we come to see as subjective what we had previously considered objective. This epiphenomenal progression means that we do not move to higher stages without fully obtaining the needed cognitive skills obtained in prior stages. The stage of subject-object differentiation we are in sets our capacity for subject-object differentiation. We can expand our capacity through exposure to increasing subject-object distinctions. Only as we differentiate ourselves from objects in the world are we able to see objects as they are and subsequently obtain a sense of self as subject.
Learn more: The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development, by Robert Kegan.