by Sandra Paolini | Jan 5, 2022 | Depression
Transforming Depression
Let’s face it, depression feels bad, but what’s wrong with feeling bad? We may not like it, but it’s not wrong… or right, for that matter. It’s just our experience. Unfortunately we seem to have developed the notion that certain feelings are wrong and need to be eliminated, controlled or changed.
Part of this belief stems from the fact that we live in a “feel good” society, where TV and the press publicize the idea that anything less than absolute happiness, all the time, should be fixed, drugged or therapized. Another, subtler influence stems from the dichotomous nature of western philosophical thought, itself, which separates mind and body, as well as dividing other things into categories that are mutually contradictory, like good/bad, right/wrong, love/hate, etc.
A third, perhaps even subtler factor, stems from the linguistic idiosyncrasies inherent in our language, especially the practice of nominalization, which allows us to turn a process into a thing. For example, we use the word “depression” as if it were a noun with static thing-like qualities, like a bowling ball or an orange. We do the same thing with words like relationship; relationship is not a thing, it’s an ongoing process of relating. In the same way, depression is not a thing, it’s an on-going process of depressing. Viewing it as a solid thing effectively cuts off our readiness to see its process-like variability. Therefore, what might have been transient uncomfortable feelings seem solid, bad and in need of fixing.
We’ve been set up
In a way, we’ve been set up by these powerful, yet often unquestioned, underlying assumptions. But what if we did ask questions; what if we began to deconstruct this whole catastrophe? What would we find? First of all, if we looked deeply into the nature of the depressive process, we’d discover that our feelings are, in fact, transitory and fleeting; they come and go, much like the weather.
Looking deeper still, we’d also discover that it is we who participate in making them rock-solid, permanent and bad. How do we do this? What actually transpires between having a transient feeling of sadness or loneliness and ending up with solid-state depression? Well, besides the cultural, philosophical and linguistic issues already mentioned, it’s the thinking mind that gets in the way.
You are what you think
Thinking, in and of itself, is not a bad thing; it’s the nature of the mind to think. From an evolutionary point of view, it’s what separates us from other living creatures and perpetuates our success as a species. Our mind’s ability to plan, decide, innovate, question, review the past, anticipate the future, and create patterns has kept us safe and thriving; but there’s a downside.
Thinking can get stuck in a self-perpetuating feedback loop that continues long after the triggering situation has passed. I should also add that this thinking mind does not operate in isolation, as the Cartesian principle would have us believe; it’s intimately connected to our feeling body, which is why we feel worse, the more we think negatively about things.
Next time an emotional situation comes up, observe what happens in your body and mind. Notice which physical sensations and thoughts arise in direct response to your experience, notice which feelings, thoughts, images, memories, ruminations and worries continue long after the situation has passed, and notice how these thoughts and feelings seem to build and intensify each other through time.
How does this happen
By way of an example, suppose someone wrongly criticizes you. You initially react with a tightening in the chest or stomach as you recoil into a flood of half thoughts, fuzzy images, partial memories, physical sensations, and emotions. This flurried activity of the body/mind, causes the original tightening to intensify; however, this usually happens so fast, you’re barely aware of it.
Perhaps, at the moment of impact, you froze and said nothing or perhaps you were flooded with adrenalin and felt rage. In an odd way, however, you’ve effectively derailed from the uncomfortable feeling that first showed up with the experience. Later, you continue to ruminate about all the “woulda, coulda, shoulda’s” you didn’t act upon.
You may engage in thinking of ways to isolate and avoid this person or anyone like him in the future. Other thoughts or memories of shame, guilt and hopelessness may set in. Here again, the original feeling of distress is lost, but the thoughts and newly associated feelings continue to fuel the pain with incendiary self-talk.
As you see, you’re no longer reacting to the original criticism, but rather to your thoughts about the experience. Pretty soon the thoughts feel more real than the raw experience and you find yourself immersed in a problem saturated tape loop that seems rock solid, impenetrable and larger than life. And, because we’re a pattern making species, these patterns coalesce and become a tightly woven depressive filter through which life, itself, is lived. Unfortunately, the original feeling of discomfort has never been addressed.
Getting out of the trap
So, how do we get out of this trap? Well, we can start by actively noticing precisely what it is we’re doing, thinking, saying and feeling and how these processes interact to derail us from being present with the immediacy of our experience. Just noticing this process is enough to jump-start the change process because it brings an element of consciousness to patterns that had previously been under cover.
Working with a therapist can help you acquire the skills necessary to separate experience from your thoughts about experience, as well as helping you develop the courage and willingness to explore the feelings you’ve been trying to avoid. In fact, modern cutting edge therapies (including ChangeWork Strategies) have re-discovered what wise sages have known all along: learning to be present with your feelings, as they arise, without suppressing, denying or acting out in your habitual way, is the royal road to fearlessness and the antidote to suffering.
It all sounds so simple, but contacting our deepest fears and the places that scare us, is not for wimps. It requires courage, strength and faith; which ironically begin to surface in a very unique way, as the work proceeds.
Working with non-fear elements
Strength, courage and faith are born from experience in two important, yet paradoxical, ways. First, as you stay present with your fears without avoiding, struggling or attaching to your usual story line, you’ll find distressing feelings begin to pass right through you… like clouds through the sky.
You will have stayed present, touched your deepest fears and not died, which is often our unconscious belief about what might happen. This takes courage, because it feels so downright annihilating to sit through the fire. But the truth is, feelings are transitory and fleeting.
Paradoxically then, this act of courageousness brings a recognition of the true nature of feelings. This in turns brings a deep sense of inner freedom, strength and lightness. Nice to know.
Second, as you explore depression, you’ll discover brief moments of non-depression, lightness, energy and maybe even happiness. These pockets have been there all along… unnoticed and untapped. They were missed due to the tightly woven depressive worldview I spoke about earlier: when depressed, the whole world verifies this by providing us with experiences we define as depressing.
But, the willingness to explore fear allows us to tap into the non-fear components that come along for the ride. The truth is, nothing is as it seems and everything carries with it, its opposite. Also, nice to know. For wrapped up in the unlikely package of fear and depression, is an inner kernel of wisdom, knowledge and even joy.
By deeply touching our fear, we come to know the nature of fear as well as the nature of non-fear elements like joy, compassion, patience and generosity of spirit. Nice perks. Now all you have to do is make the non-fear conditions bigger, longer and sustainable and you’re halfway there.
by Sandra Paolini | Jan 5, 2022 | Panic
Transforming Panic
In the usual psychological literature, panic is described as the sudden onset of intense fear in the absence of real danger. It’s hallmark symptoms, happen in both the body and mind and can include palpitations, sweating, shakiness, trembling, shortness of breath, chest pain, nausea, lightheadedness, along with intensely fearful thoughts of going crazy, losing control or dying.
None of this is fun. And what makes matters worse is that in order to avoid this dreaded experience, you begin to avoid your life, including people, places and situations where panic might kick in. This pervasive avoidance is what the popular literature defines as agoraphobia.
It’s a small world
If you suffer from panic and agoraphobia, you may have discovered that over time, your world has become smaller and smaller while panic and fear loom larger, occupying more time, thought and energy… most of it wrapped up in avoidance. Like most folks, you have probably sought relief from all sorts of stop and control strategies, only to find the distress remains and grows even more pervasive.
According to the tenets of third wave psychological theories like ACT, as well as ideas contained in the wisdom traditions, this is because the struggle to control, manage or eliminate symptoms, just sets you up for more suffering. Now, not only are do you suffer from panic, you’ve upped the ante by increasing the intensity of panic associated with not being able to control it. So in order to get a sense that you have some control, you shrink your world to avoid an attack.
Avoidance makes it smaller
This avoidance strategy makes sense… if it shows up; don’t go there, or if it hurts; don’t’ do it! But the internal world of thoughts, feelings, fears, beliefs and physical sensations don’t really conform to the logical remedies that work in the external world of objects. The internal world is not really a logic-based system, despite all appearances.
In fact, have you ever noticed, regardless of all your best efforts to change, you find yourself reacting in the same old unresourceful way? The panic response, itself, just seems to spring into place without warning or with very little provocation. It could be a brief change in a physical sensation that suddenly penetrates awareness or a random disquieting thought moving through the mindscape that moves you from a still-point to full blown panic in a split second.
Trying to halt all this by instructing yourself to stop, which is a logic-based solution, has very little effect during the full blown physical-emotional reaction set of panic. Telling yourself to stop, then finding you can’t, increases the intensity and duration of panic by making the whole thing seem even further out of control and thus even more frightening. The more tenable solution is to learn to tolerate, then befriend and understand panic as a pattern, not an enemy. For in truth, it’s just a pattern and patterns, themselves, are part of the human condition. We are a pattern-making species.
It’s just a pattern
Anxiety, panic, depression and pretty much all other symptoms of distress can actually be viewed as unresourceful patterns. They are in place because your natural intelligence and self-protection mechanisms kicked when you needed them, usually in very early childhood. Somehow, perhaps by chance or temperament, you unconsciously discovered that a particular anxiety pattern helped you cope, either as a way to distract yourself from distress or to give yourself a sense of control over the more fragile world of childhood.
As a child you probably didn’t experience full blown panic, but looking back you may recall other milder defense mechanism, like withdraw, isolation, stomach aches, nail biting or anything else you found soothing or comforting. From this perspective, you can see that these patterns were enacted primarily to protect you from feelings that may have overwhelmed you when you were younger and more vulnerable. You did the best you could with the resources and skills available to you at the time.
You’ve been OK all along
In an interesting way, you’ve been working perfectly all along; you are coded to create patterns and you did. But now you are older and these protective patterns have lost their usefulness and in fact, have become the opposite of useful; they’re down right distressing and limiting. But hating them and hating yourself for having just makes the whole thing worse. You are now fighting against your own strategies for self-preservation. It seems far better to befriend, understand and appreciate these patterns by using the basic intelligence inherent within them to build new more resourceful patterns.
How therapy can help
Third wave psychological theories, like my approach, incorporate cutting-edge methods along with ancient wisdom… which, prove very helpful in letting go of the urge to control, while beginning to live your life with value and integrity.
This is, in fact, a new methodology that helps you start where you are, even if you feel totally hopeless. It is a system that helps you cultivate non-judgmental awareness in order to take a slower, closer look at the basic components of your panic pattern. As you tease apart the thoughts, images, beliefs, fears and physical sensations, you’ll see how they fit together to drive the panic experience.
In fact, just noticing how thoughts, feelings and actions go together, reinforce each other and drive your experience will set the frame for change. Now, what had been an unconscious process is fully conscious; you have been stretched beyond the problem to a realm where possibility, flexibility and real choice can become part of your experience.
by Sandra Paolini | Jan 5, 2022 | Uncategorized
Transforming Anxiety
Anxiety and other psychological disorders are usually characterized by their familiar signs and symptoms. In the case of anxiety, its stress gone wild… symptoms include excessive worry, muscle tension, restlessness, changes in sleeping and appetite, difficulty concentrating, focusing and remembering, and the like.
The mainstream approach is to control, manage or eliminate symptoms in order to stop the thoughts and consequently change negative feelings and behaviors. However, this approach neither gets to the underlying patterns of suffering, nor builds the ability to tolerate the experience of anxiety itself.
Perhaps the problem lies in the way anxiety is defined. If we see it as a disease or dysfunction, we will try to eliminate, control or manage its manifestations. But if we see it as a valuable ally in our quest for a life well lived, we might be able to mine its depths and discover pathways to real transformation.
Anxiety: Viewed As An Ally
How could anxiety possibly be our ally? First of all, if it hadn’t shown up in our lives, we probably wouldn’t be motivated to venture into this wide-open space of self-discovery. Ancient mystics and sages have always known that suffering is the true path of transformation, because without it, we’d never be motivated to do this work.
People whose lives are easy probably don’t find this kind of thing interesting; but people who suffer are very motivated to search for relief and new strategies for change. So, in an interesting way, you’ve been chosen, so to speak, by life’s circumstances to venture into new territory and get to know yourself on a level you’ve never imagined possible. In this way, anxiety can be thought of as a worthy ally and a guide into the depths of your soul.
Working With Anxiety: Start Where You Are
But practically speaking, where do you actually start on this depth-filled adventure? The good news is you simply start where you are… in the middle of all you believe that’s wrong and bad. By cultivating a scientist’s objectivity and your own natural curiosity, you can begin to slow down and tease apart the components of anxiety, especially your self-talk about anxiety.
You’ll soon discover anxiety has some basic building blocks: thoughts, physical sensations, images, emotions, underlying beliefs, memories, fears and the like. As you stay present with your experience, you’ll further discover HOW these building blocks blend and reinforce each other, fueling the fire of anxiety and keeping it strong. As you delve even deeper, you’ll notice how thought patterns get stuck in a recurrent tape loop of fear and doom, which until now, had been a largely unconscious process.
The Act of Noticing Starts the Change Process
In a paradoxical way, you’ll also discover that the very act of looking begins to propel the change process. In fact, looking, by itself, changes things because now it’s no longer an unconscious process driving your behavior without your permission. You are response-able.
With very little practice, you’ll be able to separate the physical experience of anxiety from your commentary about the experience. This commentary is, in fact, simply the recurrent thoughts that run, nonstop, along side of real life. The fact that thoughts are there is not the problem; but, as you may have noticed, with anxiety, they almost always include a powerful dose of judgment, criticism and comparison.
The Act of Separating Experience From the Thoughts About Experience
Separating the experience from the thoughts about the experience is the first step to penetrating the seeming solidity of anxiety. This process will bring you into direct contact with the observing mind, which is fundamentally different from the normal blah, blah, blah, yak, yak, yak mind.
Through yet another paradoxical twist, you’ll find that touching the observing mind, brings a sense of freedom, which in turn, reinforces your commitment to stay present with your experience, without distracting, avoiding or acting in the habitual ways. The less you avoid being with your own experience, the more easily the experience will pass right through you, because in essence, this is what thoughts and experiences do… they pass, they are transient. It is we who solidify them and keep them active, growing and in place. This is not a bad thing; it’s just human nature.
The Good News
The good news is, as you work with this, you’ll discover the same processes and strategies contained within anxiety (thought, feeling, image making, memories and self talk) can be cultivated and directed toward life enhancement and creative potential. In fact, once you recognize that you are an active participant in creating your world, the easier it becomes to access and cultivate your true vision. As you may have guessed, the basic building blocks of anxiety and creativity are the same; it is up to you how to use them.
by Sandra Paolini | Jul 24, 2017 | Uncategorized
The world is changing.
There’s been a lot of scary talk lately about the exponential rate of change in our world, along with suggestions about how to thrive amid all the uncertainty. It’s become obvious that old methods won’t prepare you for an unpredictable future; so, if you want succeed, you had better get about the business of focusing where it counts: on change models that work.
I’ve been intensely interested in the change process for decades, so I’m always on the lookout for models that offer practical, highly effective, immediately usable… and of course, ultimately transformational strategies.
For the last year or so, I’ve been actively exploring Kegan and Lahey’s “Immunity to Change” model and have been increasingly struck by both the simplicity and the depth of this approach. Not only does it expose where you’re stuck, but it also offers ways to transcend limitations, expand your worldview and become adaptable enough to meet any challenge coming down the pike.
How do you keep up?
My intention in this article is to offer an introduction to this method and guide you through the initial step of their process… just to give a sense of how this works and why it’s different. If you like what you see, hit me up for more.
Let’s start at the beginning. The name itself: “Immunity to Change” comes from the idea that your emotions have an immune system analogous to the one in your body. And just as your biological immune system can overreact under certain conditions – like with autoimmune diseases or organ transplant rejection, your emotional immune system is subject to a similar kind of reactivity.
In general, your emotional system is composed of things like thoughts, feelings, sensations, images and memories along with your hidden beliefs, assumptions, agendas, expectations and unconscious patterns.
How do you get stuck?
You can tell when your emotional immune response is activated because you wimp out and don’t follow through with making the changes you wanted to make. For example, have you ever promised yourself you’d go to the gym, and then find you’re caught in a mental tug of war of pros and cons… only to finally concede that you’re just too tired, hungry or busy to go? It’s like that.
Kegan and Lahey refer to this action as akin to having one foot on the brake, while the other foot is “pedal to the metal” trying to accelerate. Basically you’re stuck in a holding pattern, using a whole lot of energy reviving those engines, but going nowhere.
So why does this happen? Well, because you actually have “competing commitments”: one the one hand you have a conscious commitment to take action; but on the other hand, you hold tight to an unconscious commitment to protect yourself from something emotionally distressing.
OK, so how does this play out in real life? Although it’s different for everyone, I’ll suggest one possible scenario using the gym example above. Imagine yourself stuck in that back and forth decision-making process. You really want to go the gym, but for some reason, you begin feeling tired, hungry, distracted or overwhelmed with your to-do list. Watch as your rational mind lends support until the thoughts and feelings loom so large, they simply win out and you stay home.
On a deeper level, talking yourself out of following through is a strategy designed to manage the anxiety that arises from pressures that may have overwhelmed your developing nervous system when you were much younger. Maybe you suffered from perfectionistic pressures from parents, or maybe love and affection were withdrawn as a way to get you tow the line or maybe you found yourself locked in a losing battle with authority figures.
Now when you pressure yourself, those older, less mature strategies kick in and you find you’re talking yourself out of doing what you wanted to do. Your immune system has successfully prevented you from having to feel or remember all that older distressing stuff. Of course, unless you’re willing to go under the radar to see what’s driving your indecision, you won’t follow through on important goals.
This anxiety management system shows up is differently for everyone; but, finding out how it shows up for you is the key to transformational change. Otherwise, instead of running your mind, your mind is running you. And that would suck.
How do you get unstuck?
So, how do you get that proverbial foot off the brake? Well, Kegan and Lahey have some pretty good ideas. After 25 years of researching the question of why people don’t change, they’ve developed a method that gets to the heart of the change process. Their model clarifies why you’re stuck as well as how you can activate higher order processes to change the WAY you think, feel, communicate, make decisions and solve problems. So yeah, this is pretty big stuff.
In essence, their theory is focused on transforming your meaning making system. In fact, as you move through the natural stages of development – from infanthood on, your meaning making system expands in its ability to handle more complexity in simpler ways. This expansive quality helps you engage with others, the world and your future in ways that are far more flexible, agile, adaptable… and direct
It’s kind of like this: Imagine hikers at different levels on the climb up a mountain. Each sees the vista from his level, but is unable to see what’s available further up the climb. The guy at the summit has the most expansive view. He is able to look down and see his ascending route as well as the best way to complete the hike back to home base. He sees where he could have sidestepped problems, as well as what others will face as they climb. He can also see problem areas on the return trip and can adjust his plans to accommodate what he knows is coming. He is making new meaning at a level unavailable to him before he hit the summit. Of course adult develop is more complicated than that, but you get the picture.
In essence, Kegan and Lahey have organized a massive body of research into a deceptively simple format designed to get you to the summit, by guiding you through a 4-step process. These steps are structured to track goals, overcome perceived obstacles and take the kind of action that aligns with your core values… but in a way that focuses on changing your mindset – not your skillset, If worked through carefully, this model has the potential to reveal the kind of insights that may have taken years to surface in therapy.
Where do you start?
So in this article, I’m going to outline the first step of the Kegan-Lahey model to give you a feel for how the process works. But don’t be fooled by the simplicity of the language, especially in this first step. This step, which is the linchpin that holds the whole shebang together, asks a seemingly simple question: What is the one big thing you could get better at that would significantly improve your life and help you be a better version of yourself.
I say seemingly simple because at first glance it appears easy enough to come up with all kinds of ideas and goals. But K and L insist that you give this question your full consideration because it impacts everything that follows. They offer instructive guidelines to help you formulate your answer in a way that leads to a truly transformative outcome… which is what this is all about, right?
So here are their guidelines for a coming up with a good entry.
- It should be about personal growth
- It should be something you’ve tried before, but haven’t achieved the progress you wanted.
- It should be important and interesting to you.
- It should be stated in the positive
- It should be something you want to get better at
- It should be about you and what is within your locus of control
- It should be an improvement goal, not an outcome goal. (I’ll explain this one)
The next part of this first step asks you to consider why this change is important to you; then you’re instructed to wrap it up in a single sentence using this format: “I am committed to get better at (insert your change goal) because (insert your reason)”.
Again this seems simple enough, but you’d be surprised by the amount of time and effort it takes to come up with your one big thing and your why. That’s because we normally don’t think in these broader visionary strokes about our lives. Instead, we usually get sidetracked trying to fix what we think is broken. We try things like adding more skills, doing the opposite of what’s not working or changing the external conditions of our lives. And according to Einstein, trying to fix the problem on the same level it was created, never works.
The difference between outcome goals and transformational goals.
Kegan and Lahey suggest you’re stuck because you get caught up in “outcome goals” rather than tapping into the larger transformative goal of which outcome goals are – well, just outcomes. So for example, weight loss would be an outcome of the larger more transformative goal of making healthier choices in order to increase productivity, longevity and stamina. Quite a difference, right?
If you focus on, say just losing 25 lbs., you’ll get caught up in changing things you think you’re doing wrong. You’ll try to eat less, exercise more, shop when full, and all the other prescriptive actions you think will be effective. However, chances are you’ve already tried all this and it’s hasn’t worked… at least in the long term. Something, as yet undefined, is preventing your success.
Kegan and Lahey suggest weight loss goals don’t work because you’re also committed to an emotional objective that’s just as powerful. So just as in the gym example above, your anxiety management system kicks in and prevents you from seeing what’s under the radar. In this case, it could be you’re committed to never feeling deprived, or never having to follow someone else’s rules, or never having to limit choices. Again it’s different for everyone, but unless you know how you get in your own way, you’ll just keep spinning your wheels.
Let’s face it, working with the outcome goal allows you to bypass all the messy stuff underneath – which is exactly what protective strategies are designed to do. So even if it gets you nowhere, it gives you the illusion that you’re taking action to address your issue. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong issue.
However, if you tap into a more expansive mindset and are able to define your “one big thing” as making healthier choices in order to increase productivity, longevity and stamina, you’re playing with a much fuller deck. In fact, just clarifying what each of these words means begins to open the space for a bigger vision.
My experience, with clients and with my personal “Immunity to Change” practices, has validated the significance of K and L’s advice for pinning down your one big thing. In fact, working through each of their steps, requires more thought and precision than we’re normally use to when approaching change. But I can tell you with a lot of confidence, using this model has fundamentally shifted the way I coach. In a way, just working through the steps starts a process for seeing the world differently, which then sets the direction for the kind of lasting change I haven’t seen with other models. Anywhere.
It is beyond the scope of this introductory post to include instructions for the rest of the steps, especially since they are really better addressed over time and in a co-creative process. But you can take a look at https://www.extension.harvard.edu/inside-extension/surprising-reason-we-dont-keep-our-resolutions-how-overcome-it to get a better idea of what’s included.
Try it out.
But just for fun, I invite you to play around with defining your one big thing just to see where it takes you. Please feel free to share your thoughts, comments and impressions in the comment box. I’d love to hear about how this is for you. And while you’re at it; sign up on the homepage and get the FREEE UPLEVELING practices delivered daily to your inbox for 108 days.
P. S. My sense is this system is great for people who love working through organized, methodical systematized, step-by-step instructions that are designed to reveal insights along way. I’m curious about how this will work with different personality styles and I’m testing it out with clients and volunteers, using the Enneagram to form separate trial groups. Results to come.
by Sandra Paolini | Jun 30, 2017 | Uplevel Your Game
Ok, so what’s this upleveling business all about, really?
Let’s dismantle the common sense notion first. Practically speaking, upleveling seems to imply that you can move up a notch in your ability to succeed by acquiring additional skills or knowledge. In fact, we’re sort of conditioned to believe that another expensive training, more credentials or even an additional degree will propel our lofty goals into the stratosphere. Seems to make sense. But, sadly, it misses the mark, big time.
And why does common sense fall short? Well, here’s the issue: All you really do when acquiring more skills or knowledge is to add stuff to the level you’re already at. So, although what you know has increased, your way of knowing remains the same. It’s as if you’ve just added another app to your existing operating system and haven’t done a darn thing to re-engineer the system. That’s hardly unleveling.
And just as more apps won’t affect the design of your operating system, new skills won’t change your worldview or the lens from which you operate… or your ability to solve complex problems more effectively.
Upleveling is a Developmental Process.
So here’s the skinny: Upleveling is a developmental process that changes the WAY you know and HOW you operate on your world. It’s a shift into a new perspective that sees, feels and acts through a different, wider, more powerful lens… one that is flexible, agile and adaptable in ways the old lens was not.
You might be thinking all this is sounding pretty complicated. But here’s the thing, you’ve been upleveling your inner game from the time you were born. You’re actually coded and wired to do this. Imagine now, if you will, the shift in worldview that went along with all the developmental milestones of your life. From crawling to walking. From preverbal to verbal. From egocentric toddlerhood to being able to see the world from another’s perspective. At one time, you thought things didn’t exist if you couldn’t see them (that’s why peek-a-boo blows babies’ minds). There was even a time, when you had no concept of time. See what I mean?
As you look back now, it seems as if all these changes happened automatically, but you actually engaged in a very active process of learning, experimentation, trial and error, repeated setbacks and ultimate success.
The idea of emergent properties:
Here’s the crazy part: As you reached each successively higher level, it became almost impossible to remember how you once operated with your previously limited worldview. I mean, can you actually remember what your world was like from a toddler’s perspective or before you understood language or time?
And why is that? Well, because when you took those quantum leaps in development, something new emerged. This is technically known as an “emergent property”. And what emerged was a whole new, improved and transcended way of knowing.
Things that once seemed complicated and insurmountable became pretty darn simple. It’s as if all the small imperceptible advancements you were making along the way suddenly got together and took a bold leap into the unknown. As a result, your world appeared wildly transformed, but what really happened is you were transformed and began to see the world from a new wider-angled lens.
And, here’s the spooky thing about emergence; there’s no way you could have predicted how your perspective would change before you took the leap. Of course, others could tell you, but you wouldn’t really get it. Try to tell a toddler to wait 15 minutes. He understands the words but has no idea how to gauge time.
Just to bring it back to an level that make senses from where most of us are now…think enlightenment. We’ve all heard about it, but can we actually fathom the mind as pristine, boundless, non-dual and mutually arising with all that is? Umm, not too likely.
What does science say about all this?
OK… on to the science part. Most of your astounding physical and cognitive milestones happened within the first 15 years or so of your life. In fact, up until a few short decades ago, researchers believed development peaked in adolescence, and then stopped. Like height. But, lucky for us, they got that one wrong.
In fact, improvements in imaging technology, along with recent discoveries in brain science, have catapulted the possibilities inherent in adult development into the limelight. Not only have the experts discovered the brain is plastic, malleable and actively responds to the changes in your inner and outer environment, they also found that development evolves throughout your entire life span. Woohoo!
Your brain can actually grow new cells, strengthen existing connections and form new pathways. Until recently, no one believed that was possible. And, here’s the big news: You can play an active role in training your mind, rewiring your brain and upleveling yourself to the next stage… at any point.
There are MAPS!
And wait for it… there’s even better news. There are now well-constructed maps allowing you to locate yourself on a developmental scale. Perhaps the most comprehensive is Ken Wilber’s “Integral Map” where he literally lays out everything we know about development from every culture, tradition, scientific discovery and leading theorists. And he has nicely distilled the essential components into a few key factors that you can use to facilitate your own evolution. Of course these maps have wider use in cross-disciplinary areas, but that’s beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say, there are clear, well-defined, scientifically validated, workable methods to accelerate personal development. So yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about.
And, there are methods.
By now, you’re probably wondering what these evolutionary methods are all about and where you can get your hands on a few? Frankly, they’re all over the place and most have been around for millennia. We’re just hearing about them now because science has been active in validating their effectiveness and efficacy. Think meditation, mindfulness, yoga, tail chi and all the esoteric practices from the world’s wisdom traditions that have found their way into our modern world
At their core, all these practices are designed to fundamentally transform your consciousness, your inner landscape and well, life as you know it. Which methods will do it for you is a matter of trial and error, practice, learning and perseverance. Sound familiar? That’s because these are exactly the same strategies you used to gain access to each higher stage of development throughout your life.
But, the game itself is different.
Now, however the game is little different. You’re playing with a far fuller, more complex deck then your younger self. You’ve already reached a point of independence, self-sufficiency and basic skill acquisition. You also have a lot less tolerance for set backs and failures. And you’ve also had time to accumulate a lot of assumptions and beliefs about how things are supposed to be.
In a nutshell, you’ve amassed a lot of unconscious patterns that function under the radar, creating blocks and obstacles to your success. In fact, it’s hard to see where you’re stuck and where your growth potential lies because you’re looking through a lens that has a lot of blind spots. We’ve all had that unnerving experience of finding ourselves immersed in some form of procrastination instead of working toward the goal we promised we’d complete… today.
How do you get on track?
How does that happen and what can you do to get back on track? First of all, one of the reasons you get stuck is because you have unconscious commitments (to safety, acceptance, security, needs… etc) that compete with your conscious goals. These essentially act to keep your foot on the brake while you’re trying to accelerate.
Kegan and Lahley from Harvard University wrote a book about just this thing: “Immunity to Change” (it’s geared toward business and leadership; but worth a read). After 25 years of research, they came up with a behavioral protocol that helps expose the competing commitments that define your personal brand of stuckness. I often use parts of this system with my coaching clients, who are always amazed at the speed and accuracy this method has for uncovering their shadowy stuff.
Obviously, getting under the radar to expose the commitments and patterns that block your success is a big part of any method that promises to uplevel your game. But, that’s just part of the whole shebang. The rest of the work is a slower, highly focused process of training the mind with practices designed to resonate with your authentic self.
What will work for you?
Which practices will prove effective depend on your learning style, personality type, developmental level, motivational and decision making strategies and your current situation and stressors. There is not a one size fits all method, so don’t let anyone tell you differently.
After working at this for years, I can tell you with a lot of confidence, that the practices with the power to transform your mindset AND simplify other complex issues are the ones that focus on how you organize the basic details of your life. This is the emergent property at it’s best.
At the risk of sounding airy/fairy, it’s as if these basic practices act as a seed crystal or strange attractor, bringing choices and actions that you hadn’t noticed before, into focus. Interestingly, many of my clients discover that investigating these fundamental patterns pretty much sets the tone and direction for moving forward with focus, clarity and passion… at break-neck speed.
I’ve laid out a representative sample of these practices in my free offering of “108 Upleveling Practices”. You can sign up for this on my homepage. www.sandrapaolini.com. It’s free!
Why bother with all this?
But why bother with all this inner work? For one thing, doing this work has the potential to open the space for a far bigger life and a much-expanded version of yourself. But the fact is, most people, maybe even you, have been functioning quite well at their current developmental stage and have never felt the need or the drive to go beyond this. It’s been working quite well, thank-you…or at least it was, when times were simpler.
But times ain’t so simple anymore. The world is changing at exponential rates. Advances in technology are coming at you so fast and furiously, it’s mind-boggling. We can hardly imagine living without our computers, smart phones and social media interactions… and distractions. Really… stop right now and imagine. Weird, right? And just think, a few decades ago, none of this existed. Now consider how much your life has changed as a result. Could you have predicted any of this?
What’s coming down the pike next is pretty much anyone’s guess. Although technology is designed to make your life simpler, things are actually becoming more complex, chaotic, complicated and overwhelming. The old rules of increasing your skillset so you can be more competitive no longer work. Updating skills is simply not enough to be flexible enough to play the bigger, far more uncertain and unpredictable game. Your old operating system is just not designed for this.
There’s a paradigm shift afoot, Sherlock.
Here’ the thing: we’re right in the middle of a major paradigm shift (yeah, I said it) and the only way through is by upleveling your internal operating system so you can meet the emerging opportunities and challenges in the outer game with a whole new swag… so to speak.
So in a nutshell, there’s no time to lose. Especially in light of the fact that researchers have also concluded that it takes longer to jump to higher levels. The first 15 years came easy, but how long have you been operating from the same mindset? Time to get crackin’ or what?
So find yourself a coach, therapist, guru, spiritual director or anyone who has done their own inner work and knows the ropes. The right kind of support, straight talk and collaboration makes all the difference. And stop wasting money on expensive trainings until you have a better handle on how things fit together from that higher vantage point.
You got this… and I got your back. In fact you can get a feel for what these practices are like by signing up for the free “108 Upleveling Practices” on my website homepage: sandra paolini.com
