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The Paradox of Change
Given the work that I do, it's no wonder that I'm often asked,
"Do people really change?" I've given that question a lot of thought. On one
hand, even though psychotherapy, coaching and meditation are relatively slow
and inefficient vehicles, I know they do promote change. I've seen lots of
people get happier, stronger, more capable of both intimacy and
self-determination. I've seen them move through terrible experiences and come
out the other side, ready to embrace life again, even on life's unyielding
terms. On the other hand, introverts don't generally turn into extroverts. At
best, introverts become more balanced and social, and extroverts come to value
the inner life.
I guess the short answer is this: we can't make ourselves change,
not through good resolutions, self-criticism or nagging. As Fritz Perls noted,
self-improvement projects always fail. At best these operations just set parts
of ourselves into opposition to other parts, resulting in internal
contradiction. Vital energy is squandered in this personal tug-of-war, and
nothing really changes. (This is why diets are doomed to failure. My formula
is, "Six salads results in one giant chocolate bar- and a glass of wine to
boot.")
However, when we're finally willing to accept, and even welcome,
ourselves- our history, our personality, our bodies, our thoughts- just as they
are, change tends to happen spontaneously. This is what my friend Richard
Miller calls the paradox of change. The less we TRY to change, the more change
happens. Change only comes when we finally surrender in the war of the
opposites, when we give up trying to kill off the "unacceptable" parts of
ourselves.
And yet- here's the kicker. You can't surrender as a strategy, as
another covert effort to make yourself different. You can't get away with
saying to life, "OK. I'll accept myself, and that'll make me change, right?"
Nope. Life is not fooled by such petty strategems. Surrender has to be unconditional and result from a full
recognition of our utter helplessness. It has to contain a certain rueful mercy
for ourselves, a mercy that has nothing to do with niceness or even good
intentions, but out of compassion for all the wounds we've inflicted on
ourselves in the struggle against our own dark side, in this war of futility.
If change then comes, it comes by grace alone, not by any good
works of our own. We begin to understand that we live in a vast and
incomprehensible mercy, moved by forces far larger than our little minds. In
profound humility we find real gratitude for our lives and ourselves, just as
they are, just we are.
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Our defects are the ways that glory gets manifested.
Whoever sees clearly what's diseased in himself...
begins to gallop on the way.
Don't turn your head.
Keep looking at the bandaged place.
That's where the light enters you.
And don't believe for a moment
that you're healing yourself.
~ Rumi
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