Of the many ways to look at change, many focus on changing the other.
It’s certainly the most popular focus.
And probably the least productive. That is, whenever the idea is to invite the other person to change in contrast to learning a skill or adopting a different behavior.
For the individual seeking to change, finding support for such a change may prove a difficult task. Despite a willingness to change, an individual will have to find the support that works best for him. It is a process in which he may have to let go of his assumptions about how to change.
Growing up, entering and leaving school, people experienced change and oftentimes have been coerced into a change that stays present with a notion of obligation.
Society as well as our environments also provide a constant stream of ideas about how one should be, and thus how one should change. This is what society is for. It does serve the purpose of organizing and including individuals within a large group. And individuals learn to adapt to many of these “should.” However, as long as they remain in the realm of an obligation, the person will not have integrated it as being their own. They’ll know that it continues to mean living according to someone else’s will.
Among the many “should” are the way change may occur, or how it can be reached. It’s worth noting that these methods often rely on the power of the group and its ability to bring a change that is accepted. What is rarely talked about, is how such a change may not be a change. That it remains an acceptance of an obligation, not an integration of a change.
But the individual who seeks change most often wants to get rid of the sense of being obliged to change or to feel like acting in a role others are asking him to incarnate. The work thus becomes to figure out how change becomes feasible for him. It may involve inquiry into how one learns best and what one needs to learn. But what seems to be the most important aspect is the ability to develop presence to oneself and one’s experience.
Arnold Beisser once described such change through the paradoxical theory of change. It states “that change occurs when one becomes what he is, not when he tries to become what he is not.”
The road for an individual to access what he is comes through allowing oneself to be present to oneself. That is, to move through the many ways he developed to protect that person while stepping into conformity or other ways to adapt to the will of others.
And beware change doesn’t mean doing everything differently. It means to come to a position from which what one does is self-motivated and not an obligation.
