Re:The HORRORS OF CHANGE part 1

[Guest guest]

HORRORS OF CHANGE

Telle -- There have been 2 driving passions in my life. One, the

process of change and two, deciding what the necessary conditions are

for hypertrophy and strength, and providing the optimal resistance to

facilitate those conditions. Understanding, given that I do, what the

necessary conditions are for hypertrophy and strength, and what the

process of change might be has been infinitely easier than getting

others past the possibility of having to change and accept the

possibility of a more efficient method to live and exercise.

The exercise goal may be well on its way the problem now being, as Ken

O’ Neill knows all to well -- how to present the knowledge in an

understandable, useable and a challenging enough format for others to

breach the change barrier and use the system long enough to see the

benefits.

The process of change suffers the same challenges.

THE HORRORS OF CHANGE

" Man defends himself as much as he can against the truth, as a child

does a medicine, as the man of the Platonic cave does against the

light. He does not willingly follow his path; he has to be dragged

along backward. –Etc AMIEL(1821 - 1881

“One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea

“ --BAGEOUT

As I continue to research the process of change it is apparent that

there is much more to change than at first one might suspect -- and

goes a long way to explain why change is so difficult. From my point

of view, these interrelated factors are becoming more and more

obvious. Part !

• NATURAL INSTINCTIVE RESISTANCE TO CHANGE. Though this is a bit of

an oversimplification -- we are programmed to learn a way of doing

things – habits -- and once learned do such and such the rest of our

lives.

If you can imagine how life would be if we had to learn or consider

everything at every turn it's easy to realize how important habits

are. Maybe you have taken an inadvertent wrong turn, which resulted in

being in an unfamiliar neighborhood or even in the wrong place in a

large mall. Or think of the newborn flailing around on their backs

trying to make sense of things. This is what life would be without

learned habits.

The more automatic more behaviors are the less active attention is

required for life’s inanities – and more attention for dealing with

life’s uncertainties; danger (sabertooths), maintenance (food

gathering) and procreation (sex). Thus, those best able to form

strong, permanent habits had a much greater chance to pass along their

DNA. Fifty thousand years ago, when environments were constant and

dangers everywhere entrenched habits were a must -- now when change

and life’s uncertainties are constant, habits are often a liability.

If you want an extreme example of the difficulty to change, consider

that women didn’t get the right to vote until 1972 in Switzerland --

thirty years after WW II, 15 years after landing on the moon!!!!. We

humans have been a social structure for way past 1,000,000 years, went

from throwing sticks and stones to ICBM’s and women got the right to

vote yesterday.

" The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in

escaping from old ones " .

- Maynard Keynes

SYSTEMIC DISSONANCE PARADOX. This is the strangest of them all and is

no doubt related to the above necessary resistance to change.

Dissonance is basically when 2 internal systems are competing with one

another for control of a thought/behavior. . Take politics -- if we

support one party or candidate we strongly tend to vilify the other as

if they were significantly more corrupt and despicable than our own –

it’s just to hard to support one while believing they are both

corrupt.

Apparently many Nazi soldiers involved in the total annihilation of

conquered peoples committed suicide rather than face their own inner

dissonance – despite the Führers blessings and his incredible

propaganda machine – as did many GI’S returning home from Vietnam.

Until one of the systems becomes established this incompatibility

results in much systemic tension/anxiety

Even when we have changed behaviors – have developed a positively

valenced, positively reinforcing experience with a new much more

productive behavior -- the old dysfunctional behavior will compete

(for various lengths of time) with the new to the point of pain, long

past any intuitive necessity. This is no doubt a function of the

instinctual resistance to change previously learned. Dissonance is a

very frustrating highly anxious state, usually outside of CA conscious

awareness, which if not realized causes the persons operating system

to associate the pain with the new behavior -- increasing tension and

the probabilities of permanent relapse to previous behaviors.

Most life today is the same as 1,000,000 years ago or longer--same

look, same behaviors. Rapid(?) change is a distinctly human phenom. We

split from our primal primate ancestors 5,000,000? years ago and we

have been struggling to be who are ever since.

" All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for

what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one

life before we can enter another " .Anatole France

• EGO. What may be the strongest adversary to change, for vast

numbers of people, is admitting to ones self that ones life would/

could have been much better if so and so had been realized and acted

upon earlier. Their “egos†will not allow the thought that they

should have known better – or made different choices.

• IGNORANCE. In partial defense of the ego is the ignorance

associated with choice. As it stands now many blame their, or others,

lots in life on the previous “choices†they have made – including

to some the parents they chose before birth!! What many self-

proclaimed philosophers have not figured out is that choice is a

function of awareness. Blaming all of life’s misfortunes on past poor

choices is about as smart as blaming ones self for not “choosingâ€

the right lottery numbers.

Awareness is not reading a novel or hearing about life from ones

friends or thinking (in the normal sense of the word) about

consequences – but the outcomes as actual experiences (or very close

facsimiles thereof) of what one is considering. The closer the

facsimile is to the actual outcome the greater the awareness.

• WRONG IS WRONG SYNDROME. Two wrongs don’t make a right. That is,

when we believe we have made a mistake – that we have been wrong –

we then beat ourselves up for it. Thus, it is Wrong to be Wrong – bad

mindset -- it rather discourages insight and growth. If Edison had

this problem we’d still be using candles to read by. He is known to

have said, “I did not make 10,000 mistakes (before the light bulb

worked) but discovered 10,000 ways that didn’t work†– big

difference.

Because all of our behaviors are based on what we expect to happen

next -- if the expectation that we will prove ourselves wrong is

strong enough -- we will tend to chose a much less painful path --a

habit.

Turning “wrong is wrong†into “ways that didn’t work†or that

previous behaviors/circumstances have culminated in this current

opportunity is a bit of an ongoing struggle – but the awareness of

the process helps immensely.

• LEARNING. Another obstacle faced by “changers†is realizing

that change takes learning; time, effort, focus, seeking viable

strategies, persistence –- knowing all along that “things get worse

before they get better†--- if in fact they do get better – that

there are no guarantees! "

" Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to

make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done,

whether you like it or not. " Author??

End of part 1

Jerry Telle

Lakewood CO USA