How often have you started a fitness program, decided to learn a new skill, promised yourself to paint your living room or finish a landscaping project, only to encounter seemingly endless resistance? Sometimes the resistance is generated internally; sometimes it comes from external sources such as family, friends or coworkers.
Resistance is often a manifestation of homeostasis, the natural inclination of an organism to maintain its current condition. Homeostasis regulates change. For example, a thermostat is a homeostatic device for regulating temperature.
Homeostasis takes place whether the change at hand is good or bad. As George Leonard and Michael Murphy explain in their book, "The Life We Are Given," "resistance is generally proportionate to the size and speed of the change, not to whether the change is a favorable or unfavorable one."
In order to grow and change, we must learn how to recognize and work with the resistance which homeostasis generates. Leonard and Murphy suggest five ways to do this:
Understand how homeostasis works.
Realize that the intensity of your discomfort indicates the scale of the change, not its value. Be aware, too, that homeostatic resistance can crop up among your family, friends and coworkers as well as in yourself.
Negotiate with your resistance to change.
Rather than caving in or barreling through, find ways to modulate the rate of change so that you can learn from the process and sustain your progress. Be willing to take two steps forward and one back.
Develop a support system.
Cultivate relationships that support your development and avoid those which threaten it.
Follow a regular practice.
As Leonard and Murphy explain: "Practice is a habit, and any regular practice provides a sort of underlying homeostasis, a stable base during the instability of change."
Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning.
It will be easier for you to work with homeostasis if you let go of the fantasy that there is or should be a point in your life after which you will have arrived and will no longer need to learn.
The next time you find yourself in the grip of homeostatic alarm bells, don't assume that the discomfort and resistance are a sign that you are on the wrong path or that you are inadequate to meet the challenges you face. Instead, engage all of your faculties- logic, intuition, evaluation, analysis, comparison, inquiry, recollection, imagination- to assess whether or not the change is productive or destructive. If you decide the change is desirable, press forward gently but surely for long term growth.
(reprinted from the Spring 1998 issue of "Ladybug News.")
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." -- Albert Einstein
About the Author:
Molly Gordon is an internationally recognized Master Certified Coach, writer, and facilitator. She is the author of Authentic Promotion, a 12-week audio program and workbook in transformational marketing. Thousands of professionals and organizations from NASA to Lamaze International have used Molly's mind-body-spirit approach to embody a prosperity based on service, purpose, and lifelong learning. A pioneer in establishing a service business online, Molly's e-zine, "Authentic Promotion," is now in its eighth year of publication. Visit Molly's Web sites and blog at http://www.mollygordon.com/, http://www.authenticpromotion.com/, and http://www.shaboominc.com/.
Labels: commitment, getting support, intention, making changes, perseverance
