I will be using this blog over the next few months as a chance to try out new chapters for a book I’m writing – “The Chameleon and the Caterpillar – a guide to change and transformation”. Feedback and comments will be super helpful as I attempt to capture my research and work supporting athletes and leaders through significant personal and career changes.
Change transition and transformation.
What is change and why do we change?
‘The only constant is change.’
We are undergoing change all of the time. The movement of time brings about change in each moment. A new thought, movement, growth and decay.
There are small, imperceptible changes that we barely notice. The reason we measure our children’s height against the kitchen wall is to notice how much they grow each year.
Sometimes you can only see changes when you look back. See how much you’ve grown or how far you’ve travelled.
Some change is more obvious. A problem we’re trying to solve. The learning of a new skill. We adapt and refine the way we think and the way we behave, and with practise we acquire new knowledge and competencies.
The learning cycle from unconscious incompetence (we don’t even know we can’t do something), through conscious incompetence (we become aware that we can’t do something), to conscious competence (we can do it as long as we pay attention to it), to finally unconscious competence (we have forgotten that we couldn’t do it and now it’s second nature).
This process is happening throughout our lives, from learning to walk, to mastering the skill of driving a car, or playing an instrument.
It is also happening at much subtler levels. As we adapt to and become conditioned by our environment. Learning what works and what doesn’t, what helps and what hinders our progress.
These subtle learnings and changes shape who we are. And how we define ourselves.
“It is not the strongest that survives, but the most adaptable to change.”
We are the product of our environment. We change and adapt to be able to operate efficiently and effectively within the environment we find ourselves in. As human beings, we have learned to adapt to almost any environment on the planet.
This capacity to learn how to survive and thrive is inherent in all of us. It happens at the macro level. Consider the Inuit and the Masai – fundamentally, the same human DNA, but significantly different in many ways.
It is also happening at much more subtle levels for everyone. The complex dynamics of nature and nurture means we all have a unique sense of who we are.
We all grew up in a unique environment. Even within the same household, there will be significant and important differences. Being the first or second child is a different experience.
Our identity, mindset and behaviours are all response to our environmental conditions. Who we are, why we think what we think and how we do what we do is all in response to the world around us.
And we are constantly changing. As the environment changes, so do we. Change is a process of homeostasis – an attempt to find balance and harmony with the world around us. This is happening at a cellular level, but we can also see it at a behavioural, physiological and psychological level – what we think, feel, and do – is all part of a mechanism of adapting to stimulus within our environment If it’s cold, we put a coat on, if we’re hungry, we eat. The stimulus-response mechanism has us constantly adjusting to what is in front of us.
We are predictability machines. We learn from past experiences and use that knowledge to anticipate and navigate the future. As long as things happen as we expect them to, we will have effective strategies to deal with him.
When there is something novel or new we firstly analyse it to determine whether it is a threat. The threat response is well known – fight or flight – can I stand up for myself or do I believe I can outrun the problem. The alternative – freeze or fawn – do I hide or play dead in the hope that I’m not noticed, or do I attempt to appease the enemy in the hope they like me and won’t want to attack.
These two strategies attempting to be bigger than or more than we are (>) or being smaller than or less than we are (<) are the mechanisms that shape who we are. They are the intelligent survival strategies that we learn throughout our lives. Our personality and identity are shaped by this mixture of need to prove (>) or need to please (<) strategies.
The blueprint for our personality, the learned responses or conditioned behaviours are laid down as part of her childhood development. We adapt to the environment we grow up in. We learn what is safe, welcome, celebrated and cherished by our parents, caregivers and our communities. Who we are, what we believe, and how we do what we do is all the result of our environment.
A great deal of our identity is the product of our early childhood. We learn patterns of behaviour that help us respond to the particular household, school and local community.
‘It takes a village to raise a child.’
Unconsciously, we are shaped by the world around us. The changes are often iterative, and we may not even notice them.
But there are changes that we become very aware of. Significant changes that we might not have an immediate solution to. Changes that may feel like a threat to our survival and will require us to respond with whatever need to prove or need to please strategy that is most effective.
Change maybe stress inducing.
‘Stress is found in the gap between expectation and reality.’
When the situation we find ourselves in is different than we predicted. Then we need to adapt and respond. For some situations we simply adapt old solutions to new problems. For others, we may need to develop brand new strategies.
This is life. The change is the event that happens, transition is the time it takes to get used to it, and transformation is what happens on the other side when we have fully integrated the new learning into our system.
This happens when we first go to school, get our first job, when we leave home, get married, or have children. Life is a series of events that we adapt to. The cycle of change, transition and transformation is happening all of the time.
The stress of change happens when we can’t find our keys in the morning, it happens when there is traffic when we need to get home, it happens when we don’t get the promotion we wanted.
The response to change, the transition, can be rapid or it can be drawn out. It can take time, and it can be messy.
In minor incidents, a simple reframing or shift in perspective can be sufficient to remove the stress. Other situations may require more significant and complex transitions. When there is a significant change in the environment it may require adjustments at a behavioural level, a mindset level, or we may may even need to adjust at the level of our identity and totally redefine who we think we are.
Throughout the book, we’re going to explore these significant changes and how we might respond to them.
As a quick exercise to experience change:
Fold your arms. Notice which arm is on top.
Now fold them in the other way.
What does it feel like?
Weird. Uncomfortable or even impossible.
This is change at a behavioural level. It is asking you to do something differently than you’ve always done it. It requires you to bring conscious awareness to something that is an unconscious habit. This is what change feels like. Having to undo something you’ve always done.
If it was uncomfortable at the behavioural level of folding your arms, then the deeper journey of change and personal transformation maybe even more complex and daunting.
This is what the book is aiming to explore. Throughout the book I will be drawing on my work with elite athletes as they retire from sport. For many, this is a significant and challenging transition. I will be using stories and examples from this work to illustrate what we can all learn as we face into change in our own lives.
Using the athletes’ stories, I will attempt to demonstrate different options of how we can use change as an opportunity for transformation and reinvention. The aim is provide insight that can support you through whatever life events you have to face into. Whether that is positive change – getting married, having children, landing the big job or taking on a new role. Or in some of the more challenging change situations, such as the midlife crisis, the need to find new meaning and purpose in life or facing into redundancy or divorce. Moments when our world may be shocked to the very core of who we are.
I will be using two different metaphors: the Chameleon and the Caterpillar.
Some changes and transitions are a chance for ‘relocation’ – we can move from one environment to another, utilising old skills and modifying our behaviours so we will fit into the new environment – the Chameleon pathway.
Or when change needs to take place at a deeper level. At the level of our mindset and identity, we will explore the deeper transformative pathway – like the Caterpillar, unlocking the hidden potential to discover the beauty of the Butterfly.
Clear view 