All change!

 There are a number of buzzwords that have been flying around the past decade or so. One of them is that you should be yourself and another that you should embrace change. There are quite a few more, but I shall stick to just these two for the moment.

Somewhere there is a disconnect.

In my belief it starts with confusion between individuation and individuality. The things that make each of us unique are important to us, less to other people. They are preoccupied with their own uniqueness, and how they stand out in the crowd. So are we. We are constantly bombarded by media messages to focus on what makes us unique, and what our unique selling point is. I failed miserably at a potential client when I was asked what my USP was. I replied that that was me, I did not get the business. You have to be specific.

To be specific on your USP and what defines you, you need to be pretty focused on yourself and clearly identify your ego in terms that are clear to you and to others. To individuate though, you are called to let go of your ego. It makes perfect sense: if you let go of who you are, you become what you might be. To know who you are is not an easy thing to do, I have mentioned this before, and at the risk of becoming boring, I shall mention it again. Ego is, after all, designed to deceive. Let's just say that letting go of who you believe yourself to be (Ego) makes room for other things, self discovery, doubt and uncertainty. The old maxim still holds: the more you know, the more you realise you don't know.

Individuating means becoming an individual: "that which cannot be divided". It doesn't mean you become selfish or even individualistic. Because it isn't about you, it's about what you mean in the context of the collective you live in. How does being you contribute to the rest of the world. Being you is not a question of how to protect your identity in a society that likes us all to be the same, or getting what you want in the society that likes us all to want the same things/gadgets/clothes.

So, once you know how your ego defines you, you receive other messages: you have to be able to connect with others and be flexible in your behaviour styles. Acting like your not acting. Does that stop you from being you? How adaptable do you need to be? And while you are being adaptable to whoever is with you, are they being adaptable towards you too? Hmmm...  it gets complicated. Especially if you add power play and all that stuff. Individuation sounds so much easier than propping up your ego and connecting to other people at the same time.

To me, that's the disconnect.

If on the other hand I individuate (for better or for worse - individuation does not make you a better person) and become who I might be, then my invitation is to accept me for who I am while I accept you for who you are. You don't have to, of course. Every time someone says "You have to accept me as I am", the answer is "No, I don't." But it does allow room for exploration of and for each other.

What about change then.

With a clear identity and purpose and the idea of connecting to others in the back of our minds another message is layered on top. You need to embrace change. "Hold on a minute," you say. "I've put a lot of effort in being me, whay should I change?" Mostly it's because someone else wants you to.

Changing is not easy. Leaders in organisations get upset with people who don't want to change. Just think about it a minute. Never underestimate Freud:

... we cannot help thinking that we have managed to identify a universal attribute of drives - and perhaps of all organic life - that has not hitherto been clearly recognised, or at any rate not explicitly emphasized. A drive might accordingly be seen as a powerful tendency inherent in every living organism to restore a prior state, which prior state the organism was compelled to relinquish due to the disruptive influence of external forces; we can see it as a kind of organic elasticity, or, if we prefer, as a manifestation of inertia in organic life. Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 2003, p 76

In other words we don't like change.

In being me I have worked on and established my persona, it is giving me the results I hoped for, give or take a few disappointments along the way. I don't like others to take it away from me.

Besides that - in organisations people are frequently presented by a new vision by the leadership of those organisations. Leadership frequently balks at those on the workfloor who are reluctant to embrace the change. Besides Freud, there is also this:

1. change is rarely new, much has been tried before and not always successfully.
2. the proposed changes are rarely fully implemented (during the project more things are changed - you guessed it - to the way they were). Nor do they give the results aspired to.
3. every time management proposes a vision which involves change it makes a promise. When the proposed vision does not materialise a promise is broken, alnog with trust and all that goes with it.

All this doesn't give people much of a reason to change. Does it.