Making Friends With Change

Change has been my game during my entire adult life.  As an historian, I studied how one period, one way of acting and thinking, shifted into another.  As a psychotherapist and executive coach I tried to help people change attitudes, feelings, and behavior.  I built new organizations with the idea of changing the social fabric.  And, not the least, I’ve spent more than half a century trying to improve—that is, to change myself. 

Yet, intense as these activities have been, I don’t think I ever thought deeply, if at all, about my relationship, my romance with change.  It’s as though we’ve been partners, doing a job together but never talking about what made us good or bad for one another.  I want to do a little bit of that today.  Let me start with my partner.

Change is everywhere, a constant in our lives, even when we resist.  We change as we move from infancy to childhood, to adolescence, to adulthood.  There’s no stopping it.  We change as we move from school to school, from job to job, from one family structure to another.   From healthy to ill and back again.  From young and vital to old and ailing—or myriad other combinations of the two.  It’s relentless.  Some of these changes we initiate.  Most just roll along and we barely choose them, though it often feels better if we can.       

We often resist change, like a potential lover who makes us nervous, preferring to remain as we are.  But generally we have to adapt, willingly, eagerly, or reluctantly.  And the way that we adapt both reflects and forms our character.  We all know people who adamantly remain childlike, while others leap ahead, looking for more respect, more adventure—or just an escape from their previous place in life’s dramas. 

In fact, the drive to remain as we are, to be stable, is probably as strong as our desire or need to change.  You could say that the desire for sameness represents our need to have an identity, a way to say that “this is who I am.”  Paradoxically, we often change in the name of staying the same.  We shift relationships, jobs, even opinions to “return” to ourselves—or to close in on being our true selves.  And when we do, when we are able to return, we experience change as a safe partner.

In fact, there’s a constant dynamic going on throughout our lives, a marriage of change and resistance that represents who we are better than any particular stable picture we conger up.

For the most part, this dynamic goes on unnoticed.  We notice change and the need to change.  We notice stability or the need to stabilize ourselves.  But I don’t think we really relate to the interaction of the two, which represent us more fully than either one. 

Conscious nor not, we have a relationship with this dynamic duo—a partnership; some, seeking to know ourselves, more conscious than others.  For those who strive to be self-aware, the reward can be the ability to tend to this partnership.

For example, we can be friendly and hostile to change in ourselves and/ or to our immediate environment; sometimes we feel both.  We can be at ease with change because what we see changing or needing to change feels familiar.  It can even cheer us: “Ah I’ve seen this before, but now I’m getting somewhere”—an improved relationship or a better ability to concentrate on what’s important.  However, that familiarity can also make us fearful, evoking a distancing reaction—or out and out avoidance.  “I know I should change but it’s hard, I can’t, I won’t succeed; so I hate trying and maybe I won’t.”

Generally, our responses to change are so automatic that we don’t even take the time to pay attention.  But, if we neglect or spurn the friendship, then, to a large extent, our responses control us, not the other way around.  I prefer to think that, like any good or valuable relationship, our relationship with change takes tending and tending takes knowing. 

Let me offer a few illustration.  Let’s say we know that a massive change is on the horizon: marriage; a new job; a baby; a serious illness.  Let’s also say that we know, deep in or hearts, that we will have to change ourselves in order to meet a new challenge.  Having to share more in marriage, for example.  Learning to delegate responsibility when we more into a managerial position.  Letting go of our perhaps rigid management of time when a baby is born.  Finding new resources, even a new self-image with the onset of a major illness. 

In every case, knowing your relationship to change offers a chance to make better decisions and, more importantly, an opportunity to draw on resources beyond those that are called up automatically. 

Take marriage or jobs.  We might know how much we despise (and fear) being told what to do, told to behave differently, and that our objection often overrules a measured approach.  In such a case, we might talk to our partner (our normal relationship to change) or boss and ask for some leeway.  When we ask, we are managing the partnership, taking some of the onus from our spouse.  It’s our initiative and that, in itself, will make us feel less controlled or even bullied. 

So it is with the birth of a child.  We know, for instance, how attached and comforted we are to our morning and evening routines; and we know our tendency, our long history, for that matter, to resist anyone trying to alter them.  Knowing that, we might get ahead of the game.  We might say that change is going to happen anyway, kicking or screaming or in a resolved if somewhat unhappy way.  Again, knowing ourselves, knowing our general partnership, yet taking the initiative, helps us escape the quagmire we are probably walking into. 

I’m not suggesting that, by knowing our partnership we can alter it powerfully or indefinitely.  I am suggesting that we can seek alternatives to our normal partnership patterns and learn new ones—or, at least, build some awareness about where that partnership often leads.  We might recall, for instance, a time when we embraced change which made us more comfortable with it; or, alternatively, when we insisted on being as we are, and drew comfort in our stability. 

One final thought: ironically, change in old age does not slow, it accelerates.  Your body changes, you lose relatives and friends, you often move to a continuum of care facility or to your child’s home, where you are no longer the mistress or master of the household.  There is a tendency in old age for your partnership with change to rigidify, to rule rather than guide you.  All the more need to remain conscious that change is constant and your partnership is in need of your best strategic considerations.  What, you may ask, in the course of a lifetime has been the most satisfying version of your partnership with change. Then, as with any other partnership, do whatever you can to build and support it.