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Four Approaches to Change
Two ain’t so good for the soul.
I recently made a case that change is inevitable — it’s gonna happen.
The question isn’t, “Can we change?” but, rather, “How will you change?” Once you start here, the opportunity emerges to actually determine your trajectory.
Alas, I wanted to offer four approaches I commonly see because the approach one carries into the experience will vastly shape the health and the success of the attempt.
The Four Approaches:
- Reactive Romanticism — disguising problems by using change to cover up the real issue.
- Reactive Nostalgia — disguising problems by avoiding change and keeping things familiar.
- Proactive Nurturance — maturing components of your life.
- Proactive Alteration — confronting an aspect of your life and making it different.
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The technical jargon being employed here comes from the field of psychology, specifically cognitive-behavioral therapy and psychoanalytic psychology. Humans tend to — in the midst of uncertainty, danger, difficulty, conflict, and change — use defense mechanisms to protect ourselves and make the daunting overly simple. The best articulation I have seen is the dichotomy of reactive versus proactive responses.
Reactive responses are a sort of defense mechanism that, to put it plainly, attempts to circumvent the problem; going around the issue. From apathy to revenge, we deal with issues and engage in change by redirecting the problem elsewhere.
Proactive responses, in contrast, are ways in which we acknowledge, own, and work through the situation so as to transform the current predicament into a vital semblance of being.
That conversation deserves its own space so please allow me to simplify this concept and focus specifically on four of these approaches that are…
