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The Myth of the Threat of Change

The Myth of the Threat of Change — The Myths Series

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This entry is part 4 of 12 in the series The Myths Series
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The Myths Series


The Myth of the Threat of Change — many peo­ple fear change, so they stay stuck. Yet the fear is almost always baseless.

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Laugh­ing in the face of change

John Sav­age, a train­er in con­flict res­o­lu­tion, described var­i­ous “neu­ro-sort­ing” tech­niques to help us see how our minds are set up. 

Research backs up the per­cent­ages below. (i.e. it’s not fake news… 😉 )

One is called the “Same­ness — Dif­fer­ence Sort. It speaks to the threat of change.”

  • 10% of the pop­u­la­tion are Same­ness types. They active­ly resist change. Pro­found change for these folk hap­pens once every 25 years.
  • 40% are Sameness/Difference types. They pre­fer to stay the same, but will change if strong­ly con­vinced. The make a pro­found change once in 10 years.
  • 40% are Difference/Sameness types. They pre­fer change, but like it to be grad­ual and non-threat­en­ing. They make pro­found changes once every 5 years, and pre­fer new­ness. (Sav­age equates them with peo­ple who shop at the same mall, because there are 100 stores, as opposed to try­ing a new mall.)
  • 10% are Dif­fer­ence types. They thrive on change and stag­nate if things get too pre­dictable. They embrace change as a friend. They change pro­found­ly almost year­ly. Sav­age calls them “chan­nel surfers.”

It doesn’t take Einstein to see that 90% of the population resists making changes. Profound, earth-shaking change? Leave me out.

So… what about the model we use and teach?

To shift to the Zen-based self-respon­si­bil­i­ty mod­el is to change the entire belief sys­tem you are oper­at­ing under.

Under this mod­el, rules, behav­iours, stan­dards, ethics — all become con­di­tion­al, sit­u­a­tion­al and self-deter­mined. Scary stuff. 

Giv­en the above, 90% of the pop­u­la­tion will, at some lev­el, resist mak­ing this (or any sig­nif­i­cant) shift. 

The lev­el of resis­tance tells us where on the bell curve the per­son is.

  • 10% of the pop­u­la­tion will “nev­er” change.
  • 80% will change if per­suad­ed, coerced or con­vinced that it is in their best inter­est to do so.
  • As we move more to the right on the bell curve, the more like­ly it is that the per­son will see the need for change.
  • At the 85% and above stage, the per­son may even seek help in chang­ing.
  • For the top 5%, change is rel­a­tive­ly effortless.

This demonstrates why we say that change terrifies the vast majority of people.

Peo­ple can be herd­ed any­where, so long as each step is small. 

Make a huge change, and they’ll be out in the streets, protest­ing. Incre­men­tal change, and any­thing can happen. 

Look at the pop­u­la­tion of Ger­many in the 30’s. Hitler did what he did through incre­men­tal change.

He pre­sent­ed a mes­sage about a return to the old ways of think­ing, then tossed out some­one to blame, and in a few years, almost the whole pop­u­la­tion shifted. 

Shades of Trump today. Same top­ics, same change mod­el, same goal.

The funny thing is, though, change is actually the “truth” of life.

Every­thing is chang­ing, all the time. 

This scares us; it does so because at a deep, pri­mal lev­el, we rec­og­nize that the direc­tion of the change, for us as indi­vid­u­als, is death.

Each day brings death one day clos­er, so we try to hold on, as opposed to flow­ing along com­fort­ably in the sea of change.

Because we fear change, we are stuck in denial.

Change is only as threat­en­ing as we make it. We need­less­ly com­pli­cate our lives by fear­ing what is already our real­i­ty. The world is chang­ing at a faster pace than ever before in his­to­ry, and the pace of change is accel­er­at­ing. You can try to fight it, but all you are going to do is hurt your­self in the process.

Much bet­ter to talk with some­one about pro­cess­ing through to a new, self-respon­si­ble state. It’s not easy, but it is do-able.

Because stay­ing stuck in a dys­func­tion­al belief sys­tem is a sure way to waste 5 years… or 50. It’s a great way to be con­tent being miserable. 

After all, it’s not like life goes on for­ev­er. Mis­ery and stuck­ness is a choice. A bet­ter one is to set your­self free.

Series Nav­i­ga­tion« The Myth of Right and Wrong — The Myths SeriesThe Myth of Shoulds — The Myths Series »
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