Feature Article - Perturbation and the Process of Change

If you missed the last issue, please send an email to janine@syzergy.biz with February 07 in the subject line and we will forward the issue to you.

Note: this is based on the work of Ilya Prigogine, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry 1977, for his theory of dissipative structures.

What if you were given the following notice: Change your diet and exercise, or you will be dead in a year!

Would you change? Really?

In 9 out of 10 cases, the answer is NO.

People don’t like to change, even if their lives depend upon it. They don’t change and they won’t change.

Consider for example the cost of health care in a western country. In the US it is $1.8 trillion a year, or 15% of GDP. And yet, 80% of the health care budget is consumed by behavioural problems. People who don’t exercise enough, eat well, stop smoking, stop drinking and find stress relief.

I was chatting to a friend in Washington DC last year, and I said that fixing the health crisis was easy. Everyone knew what needed to be done. The trouble is, people wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t clean up their own habits around diet and exercise.

Even people who have massive heart attacks, and who undergo extremely risky and very expensive bypass surgery. 2 years later, for many, their lifestyles are the same as before they had the heart attack.

What is the deal with us people? Why are we so afraid of change?

Behavioural change doesn’t just affect our health and lifestyle, it affects our workplaces! We refuse to change our behaviour, even as the world around us is changing at an accelerated rate. Buy a computer new today and it is superseded tomorrow.

Change is the only constant. And it is accelerating. People who will get the gold watch of the future will be those who can, and will, change in a heart beat.

So what happens when we are in a change process?

Firstly, we start to become agitated. This is also known as stress. Some stress is good for us. (Too much, over prolonged periods, is not good for us.). Putting ourselves under regular mild stress is a healthy choice. This includes physical, mental and emotional stress. A really great exercise program for a healthy body relies on increasing the stress on the muscles, heart and lungs in a way that allows them to adapt and grow stronger.

The word for this agitation is perturbation. Our cells literally begin to vibrate. The more pressure (real or perceived) that is applied, the higher the rate of perturbation. When organisms perturbate, they start to release energy.

In humans, energy is often released as emotion. People become snappy, angry, jumpy, or even break down and cry. Sometimes it is also demonstrated by uncontrollable laughter, or irrational behaviour. Over talking, talking too fast, laughing at everything and anything.

Finally something pops! The point of this popping is unpredictable. We never know when someone will pop. It could be shortly, or it could take 6 months and occur in the presence of a seemingly unrelated incident. Once the pop has occurred, there is a rush of energy released. Like a dam breaking. The bigger the change the more likely the release of energy will also be bigger.

A threshold is crossed, and on the other side, we have a changed structure, or a changed behaviour. The process is irreversible. People can’t go back to the previous status. The butterfly cannot go back.

What does this mean in plain English?

Change is difficult, uncomfortable. Emotions will be released. Many of us do not like to experience strong emotion (in ourselves or in others), and especially dislike losing control over our own emotions. The process can take a moment, or years. (Often the individual has some choice around the length of time. We can choose consciously to go after the change, or we can avoid it at all costs, even as it comes chasing us relentlessly.) We fear the other side, the unknown part of change. What will we have to be and do differently? What will life be like? What will we have to sacrifice? Will we lose money, or status, or have to move somewhere? It seems far easier to stick our heads in the sand and die. Figuratively or literally.

Some people have found pathways to successful change in behaviour. There are several vital ingredients.

There needs to be an emotional connection to the change. I need to start to feel better. I need to be able to experience this feeling state change fairly soon after making changes. I also need to tap into emotions that make me feel good. Inspirational, empowering, service oriented, life affirming.

I need to have lots of support, for example weekly coaching sessions to facilitate and keep the change process moving in a positive direction. Without this I am likely to regress and go right back to my previous behaviour.

Paradoxically, it is far better for me to make a radical change than small, incremental changes. Radical change, with the emotional component plus the support, has been shown to be much more effective than small change steps.
Tweeking tends to unsettle people more, whereas radical change is a no holds barred approach, forcing people to cross that threshold much more quickly.

Finally, we need to continue to build the pathways for change. We need to be continuously learning, putting ourselves into that perturbating place where we are out of our comfort zone and taking baby steps. Not just every year, but daily, weekly. Learn a new language, learn to play an instrument, volunteer for something you don’t know how to do. The more you practise stepping out into the “danger zone”, the more easily you will adapt to change.

And the more easily you adapt to change, the more value you have in our accelerating world!

Be the Change. (Abridged quote from Gandhi)

Want to use this Article in your E-zine or Web site?
You can, as long as you include this complete statement with it: Syzergy dares to care about speaking the truth with compassion. We offer our complete flag ship program Dare to Care, into organisations world wide. We also provide Just in Time Coaching globally. If you would like to have your organisation be one where truth, compassion, respect and care work together, please visit www.syzergy.biz. Be sure to sign up for our free newsletter for more artilces like this one.

Ask us to solve your difficult conversations.

In future issues of Dare to Care we would like to answer questions you may have around how to communicate with consciousness in a difficult situation.
Please write to us with your conversation issues, such as how to tell a staff member they are not doing their job well, how to confront a boss who is continually asking you to do more without any form of recognition, etc.

Submit your case to us at Christine@syzergy.biz and we will select one issue per month to respond to, using the tools and principles of the Dare to Care programme to support your learning. Please note that the issue will be published, however, we will not publish your name or details, nor any of the subjects’ real names.

Resources, Tools and People We Would Love to Share

The last few months have seen the release of two of my teacher’s new books.
Ken Wilber “Integral Spirituality” provides a very intellectual and compelling look at spirituality through the integral lens. Fabulous material, and as usual, impeccably researched. Ken never just does intellect, he lives the practises he speaks of.

Caroline Myss has released “Entering the Castle”, which is based on the work of Teresa of Avila. For those of you who like going on deep interior journeys, this is a definite for you. It is deep soul work; applying the material will create transformational shifts in your being.

Other resources..we got to dine once again at the fabulous Vini in Surrey Hills, Sydney. Small, very Italian, very authentic, very unpretentious…very Syzergy!

Where in the World is Syzergy?

March was travel-full. The usual Sydney, Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast trips were joined by a week in Auckland, New Zealand. What a great city. And great people. Really great food!

April has already seen a trip to Yamba on the Northern NSW coast. At the end of this month Audrey and I are both flying to the USA, first to attend the CAM coaching conference (Conversations Amongst Masters) in Monterey, California.
As fate would have it, the Big Sur marathon is the day before the conference begins, so I am running that one. It is supposed to be not only spectacular, but also quite a challenge.
Then we are off to Washington DC, New York (24 hours only), and finally, Omaha, Nebraska to spend some time with our colleague Christopher.

©2006 Syzergy Pty Ltd    

Established in 1997, Syzergy is an international training and coaching company specialising in enabling people to speak the truth with compassion. Our flagship program, Dare to Care, has been delivered to audiences around the world, to great acclaim. Just in Time Coaching offers coaching solutions to organisations in ajust in time, innovative and efficient way.

Bring the power of truth with compassion into your organisation today!