How to Survive Change . . . You Didn't Ask for. M. J. Ryan
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an adaptive reason for this habituation. The brain is always on and consumes a disproportionate part of the body's energy. It's only 3 percent of the body's weight yet uses around 20 percent of its oxygen and glucose. It takes less work to be on automatic pilot, so it makes sense from an efficiency standpoint.
When the environment is stable, this autopilot serves us well. But during change, we have to fight against our brain's tendency to look at the situation and see the same old thing, when it's actually encountering something new. The patterns just aren't there to fall back on. We don't know what the stock market is going to do, for instance, despite all the past ups and downs, because we're in a situation that has never occurred before.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, says that we previously lived in a country he calls Mediocristan, where cause and effect were closely connected because life was simpler and the range of possible events was small. Now, the global community has entered a country that he names Extremistan, where we are both more interdependent and at the mercy of “the singular, the accidental, the unseen and the unpredicted.” (One side benefit of living in Extremistan: it also increases the possibility that one person can make a positive difference. Think of Nelson Mandela inspiring the end of apartheid in South Africa or Boris Yeltsin facing down the tanks in Red Square, which toppled the Soviet Union.) Unfortunately, our brains haven't kept up with this new complexity and keep searching for patterns based on the past even when they're not useful.
The other thing to understand about the brain is that we share many of its structures with all mammals (and even reptiles), and therefore it's hardwired to act in ways that were useful when we were being chased by animals in the wilderness but that are not well suited to the complex challenges we face today. This part of our brains, called the amygdala, is constantly scanning for danger but often gives you inaccurate information, sounding the alarm unnecessarily.
You'll be learning about some of the implications of this aspect of our brain structure throughout the book. For now here's just one, as psychologist Rick Hanson and neurologist Rick Mendius put it in an article in Inquiring Mind. Because of the advantage there used to be in perceiving danger quickly, “The brain is hard-wired to scan for the bad, and when it inevitably finds negative things, they get stored immediately and made available for rapid recall. In contrast, positive experiences (short of million dollar moments) are usually registered through standard memory systems, and thus need to be held in conscious awareness for ten to twenty seconds for them to really sink in. In sum, your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones . . . this built-in bias puts a negative spin on the world and intensifies our stress and reactivity.” In times of change, that's the last thing we need—to perceive what's happening to us as a tsunami when it's only a five-foot wave, to ignore the good and focus solely on the bad. We need to keep perspective so we can be effective in handling the change.
So what are we to do with these tendencies of the brain that don't serve us well during change? We don't have to be solely at their mercy. Becoming aware when we're in one of these habitual thinking ruts is the first step toward making a different choice. Plus, our brain can do much more than these habits, and we can use its amazing other capacities to find the solutions we need.
See As If for the First Time
To keep from falling into thinking ruts at work, Javier often asks himself, “What if this were a new job in a new company? How would I be behaving? What would I be doing differently? What would I notice that I am now taking for granted? How would I explain this to someone who knows nothing about it?” These questions have helped him keep a fresh perspective and to question what he would otherwise simply accept. Recently it led him to come up with a new marketing idea. If seeing as if for the first time is hard for you, talk to newcomers in your organization. Or to people who are not in the same situation as you. What are they perceiving because they have a “beginner's mind”?
CHANGE TRUTH #4
Change Isn't the Enemy, Fear Is
Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
—Marie Curie
I met a woman recently who told me a story that really concerned me. Jan's gardening business had dried up, she'd been living on her savings, and she was down to her last $500. One of her clients had called, letting her know of an opening as a receptionist in her husband's office that she knew Jan could fill. “He was looking for someone right away,” Jan explained to me, “and I was about to go visit some friends for the holidays. So I told her that I would see if it was still available when I got back next week.”
It took all my willpower not to yell, “Are you insane? Unemployment is sky high, you don't have a cent to your name, and you're going to take a vacation rather than a job that's virtually been handed to you?” Fortunately I controlled myself. She'd already made the call so my comment would have only made her feel terrible. But I can't stop thinking about it. What on earth was going on in her head and what lesson is in it for us?
When I asked her how she was feeling about her situation, Jan admitted to being terrified. Fear triggers the fight-or-flight response. Or more accurately the fight, flight, or freeze response. Jan was in flight, avoiding dealing with her situation in a constructive manner. All forms of denial are a flight response. But flight isn't the only option. In extreme fear, animals, including humans, have been known to literally become paralyzed. At least one of the survivors of the Virginia Tech shootings, for instance, reported that it happened to him. And traders on Wall Street have been known to freeze on the stock exchange floor while watching their clients' money disappear. It's a kind of stupor that creates an unfortunate self-reinforcing feedback loop. The stress hormones that are triggered in the fear response by the amygdala can sometimes increase the fear, making it ever more difficult for the other parts of the brain to respond. If the fear gets strong enough, the amygdala actually cuts off access to the other parts of our brain, and we lose the capacity to think rationally altogether.
Scientists have discovered that you can snap someone out of the stupor that fear can cause with a loud noise, which is why flight attendants, for instance, are now trained to yell at people to get them to move quickly out of a plane in a crash.
The other response to extreme fear is fight—my personal default setting. If I get afraid enough, my anger rises and I look for someone to attack for “making” me feel the way I do. Other people, like Jan, flee—either by literally running away or doing everything they can to avoid dealing with the reality of the change.
So how can knowing this help you? Certainly, not everyone is frightened by change. Some folks are downright exhilarated when everything gets topsy-turvy. Bring it on! they cry. The response depends at least in part on whether you tend to do a lot of innovative thinking or not. (See “What Are Your Inner Talents?” page 139.) But for those of us who like predictability and routine, times of great change can bring on intense fear.
That's why it's crucially important to recognize what we're feeling and have coping strategies in place. Fear shrinks our world and limits our ability to think creatively about our choices. It also causes us to isolate ourselves from others who could potentially help and to overgeneralize from this one situation to the feeling that the sky is falling. As we go along, I'll offer specific techniques to avoid—or at least minimize—the fight, flight, or freeze of fear and to increase our ability to accept the situation, expand our options, and make the necessary adjustments.
I know it's possible. I'm one of those who has been intimidated, rather than exhilarated, by change. I'm happy to report that over the past decade or so, I have made progress on embracing change, which I've come to see is really all about befriending my fear. For my fiftieth birthday, in fact, when former employees of mine at Conari Press wrote a poster called Fifty Things We Learned from M. J. Ryan, one of the fifty lessons was “Change is positive.” I was floored. I'm not sure if I truly taught them that, but it's certainly a lesson I strive to learn.
Let's face it—change isn't always positive. But fear is the true challenge of change. Our response