 In our fast-paced world, we have become accustomed to constant change. We have not stopped to consider the effect continual adaptation has on our lifestyle and on us.
Driving home from a long weekend recently we reminisced about how the world has changed. It was not so long ago (for some of us) that milk was delivered to our front doors in glass bottles with a thick layer of cream on the top. Fertilizer and seedlings were delivered by a gentleman who did his rounds on a bicycle. Maize was sold by ladies balancing large bundles of mealies on their heads shouting, “Mealies, mealies for sale” as they walked through the suburbs. Ice cream trucks with their tinkling bells brought excited children and helpers on to the street. Big black telephones with a round dial were what we used to make phone calls on. Cell phones were unheard of and computers were a novelty.
The pace of life is fast, and becoming faster all the time. Our society has adopted a culture of email and cell phone communications. These demand immediate responses and consistent availability. We constantly have to respond to changes around us. Although we live with change, few of us realise that the constant pressure of having to adapt takes its toll. People complain of tiredness, lack of motivation, stress, anxiety and an inability to sleep. Career women have high rates of infertility and suffer more heart attacks than ever before.
Remaining resilient in troubled times involves having an understanding of what is happening to us. When it comes to understanding the impact change has on us, there are a couple of useful guidelines.
Picture the scene:
There we are, nicely settled in our comfortable, orderly lives. We are under pressure from our boss to study, or from our spouses to have that second child. As we entertain these thoughts we do something inherently natural: we become resistant. Thoughts such as “Do I really need to study?” or “Is it not enough to simply have one child, do we need a second?” go around in our minds. We instinctively realise that by deciding to study or have that second child, our lives will change and become more complex. Let’s assume that we pursue the decision and follow through on studying, and/ or having that second baby. We will go through a stage of chaos. Balancing our relationships with our pressurised job and with our new studies makes attending lectures and keeping up with assignments and deadlines difficult. In the case of a new baby, sleepless nights, mood swings, and unrelenting tiredness precipitate desperate times and thoughts such as “Why did I do this?”
Over time we adapt to the new pressures and become creative. Gradually we become innovative and we find a new study routine that works for us, or we adapt to the little creature that dictates the priorities of our days and nights. Life becomes manageable and we are able to adapt, cope and relax into an orderly pattern once again.
The process that we go through when adapting to change is therefore: order, resistance, chaos, creativity, and once again order. Looking at change in this manner highlights the fact that each and every change that enters our lives presents us with an opportunity to enhance our level of functioning, and to aspire to our own unique potential.
Because we are human, when things happen to us we respond emotionally. There are a couple of interesting aspects of change: if we initiate a change, we tend to experience less stress than if this change is imposed upon us. Mostly however, people take some strain as things change. The reason for this is that we experience change as loss of the familiar. Think upon this for a moment. Buying a new house with hard-earned money brings with it increased responsibility. Progressing from a motor bike as a means of transport to a car means having to adapt to driving in traffic and parking restrictions. Being promoted to a management position incurs a sense of being alone, having to take responsibility, and no longer being one of the crowd.
The question that begs to be asked is: how do we respond emotionally to the threat of loss of the familiar? We have a whole repertoire of responses available to us. This ranges from denying the impending change and hoping that it will go away, to being angry about having to change, blaming others for imposing the change on us, thinking about how we could avoid the change, and feeling tired, overwhelmed and unmotivated. These are all normal reactions and mostly over time they pass and we move on.
There are major contradictions in our fast-paced society. One of these is that never before have we been so verbal about emotional intelligence, how important relationships are, how we value human capital and how important people are in the workplace. At the same time, however, never before have people felt quite as alone, insular, isolated or communicated less authentically and honestly with each other about their fears and anxieties.
Change is here to stay. It presents each of us time upon time with the opportunity to be more of ourselves. Every time we change we do lose what it is we are comfortable with and we have intense emotions about these pressures. What matters is that we appreciate these emotions as normal and have awareness that we all experience them, even if we don’t acknowledge this to one another.
So go out there and ride those waves of change with an enhanced understanding of what is going on. Most of all, know that what you are experiencing is common to every “human bean”.
About the author: Dr Renate Volpe is the CEO of the HIRS Women Leadership Development consultancy. Should you be interested in attending her Personal Mastery workshops email her on
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
or call Margareth at (011) 455-0769.
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