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So why is change so difficult for most of us? Ron Heifetz, a professor and founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School articulates that it depends on whether the kind of change challenge you are trying to solve is a technical one or an adaptative one for you. A technical challenge is called technical because the skill set necessary to perform the complicated behaviors is well known. On the other hand, he states that “an adaptative challenge can only be solved by transforming your mindset, by advancing to a more sophisticated stage of mental development.” Similarly, in their book Immunity to Change - How to overcome it and unlock the potential in yourself and your organization, Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey introduce the concept of immunity to change as the current limits of our own mental complexity as we try to formulate and solve a problem adaptively. They talk about hidden competing commitments impeding the achievement of the visible commitment. They write: “when we make a New Year’s resolution, we look at the behaviors we want to extinguish as bad; we look at the behaviors we want to amplify as good. But until we understand the commitments that make the obstructive behaviors at the same time brilliantly effective, we haven’t correctly formulated the problem”. The authors talk about an immune system (and they use the medical metaphor very intentionally), describing it as an “extraordinarily intelligent force that elegantly protects us, to save our lives. Every immunity to change can be seen as an asset and a source of strength for that person.” And working against our own immune system is extremely hard. To illustrate this point, let’s take the example of losing weight as a New Year’s Resolution, or visible commitment to use Kegan and Laskow’s language. Behaviors that work against that goal of losing weight are (from the book): I eat too much I eat when I am not hungry I eat food with too much fat I eat food with too much carbohydrate
The hidden competing commitments (the immunity system working against achieving the goal) will vary from person to person. For Person A, a hidden commitment could be “I am committed to not being bored, to feeling stimulated and energized. I am committed to not feeling empty.” For Person B, it could be “I am committed to feeling well connected to my people, to receiving love when it’s offered to me.” And Person C could have a competing commitment of not wanting to be seen and therefore related to as a sexual object. For each of these individuals, losing weight is an adaptive change challenge, but for each a different adaptive challenge. None of them is likely to succeed by dieting alone. The route to success for each will be different because each person’s immune system is unique. So, understanding the self-limiting and sometimes unconscious beliefs which contribute to your hidden competing commitments is key to overcoming an adaptive change challenge and therefore keeping your New Year’s Resolution. According to Steve March, founder of the Aletheia Coaching school, New Year’s resolutions are often framed as self-improvement projects which are born from a sense of self-deficiency, and reinforce that same sense of self-deficiency, leading to the conclusion that we do not have what it takes to make the changes we seek, and resulting into soon dropping our resolutions. Rather than self-improvement, Steve invites us into self-unfoldment, by declaring a complete self-acceptance of who we are. Then, any efforts we make to lose weight, exercise more, or drink less become expressions of self-care, deep acceptance, love and appreciation of ourselves. Want to try it? Here are two practices to get you started:
- a practice of unfoldment in Nature that I name Zenmai practice after the Japanese name of the Asian royal fern, and
- a meditation on habit change and new beginnings by The Mindful Movement
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