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Registered Psychologist and Registered Marriage & Family Therapist
Feeling accepted can provide fertile ground for personal growth and transformation. The more we feel accepted as we are and not condemned for our faults, the greater space we experience to act for ourselves to make changes and the more inclined we become to change. There is an obvious paradox here: with acceptance comes change. The more we feel rejected and judged, however, the less likely we are to change in a direction that leads to growth and fulfillment.
It would be a mistake, however, to believe that people rely on acceptance before they can change or that they don’t change at all. The truth is that we are constantly changing throughout our lives, from the microscopic cellular level to the evolution of our personality over time. According to Scientific American, your body replaces about 330 billion cells daily, or about 1% of all your cells. “In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion cells will have replaced—the equivalent of a new you.” Such change, of course, is gradual, which brings me to this post, where I want to delve a little deeper into the dynamics of change and explore the intriguing contrast between two distinct forms of transformation: the sudden and dramatic shifts that we can experience from time to time and the more subtle, incremental progressions that shape our journey through life.
When people change they often do so in two ways. One type of change is sudden, dramatic and seems to be a large leap forward or backward from the state of being that was characteristic of us only a short moment ago. The other type of change is more gradual and involves progression from one state or stage to the next in a stepwise fashion, line upon line, precept upon precept , often so gradual that, looking back, one cannot really see the defining edges.
Scientists and developmental theorists call these two types of change discontinuous and continuous change, respectively, and examples of each type of change can be found in all disciplines, from economy, to sociology, to family and couple relationships, to the natural environment, and to the world of biology. It can be found in everything from the world’s business literature to the world’s wisdom and spirituality literature.
The essence of discontinuous change is that when change does happen, it isn’t progressively building on a previous change. It isn’t necessarily slow, laborious, or hard work. Sometimes it can come very easily and surprisingly quickly, and often such change occurs on multiple levels and in multiple domains, all at once. And the explanations for such changes are often hard to pinpoint.
It isn’t hard to think of examples of this type of change, all around us, both in fact and in fiction. Think of the overnight, evangelical shift of Ebenezer Scrooge. Think of the person who suddenly loses 100 pounds in a very short period, after years of unsuccessful efforts to lose weight. Think of new inventions that seem to propel the world forward in a leap, as opposed to sequential innovations that build on the technology that preceded it.
For example, we suddenly don’t feel angry anymore when we truly begin to see and recognize the internal logic of the other person’s feelings. It is not an uncommon occurrence in the lives of people I come in contact with on a daily basis to go from tenaciously holding on to one’s view that “I am right and you are wrong and you have to change” to having a softened heart and a stronger desire to be there for the other person, and for this shift to occur quite suddenly and surprisingly.
You may have heard many stories, as have I, of people who have held years of bitterness, resentment, and recrimination in their heart, suddenly letting go of the hate and experiencing in its place peace, love and forgiveness. At such times, it seems as though the person has been transformed, that a new person stands where the old one stood yesterday, or even a moment ago.
Often the important change mechanisms in these types of relational changes have to do with a heart-felt, conscious decision to let go, to stop resisting, and to open one’s eyes and ears and heart so that one’s vision is expanded. With that new sight, we simultaneously see the other person’s feelings more completely, more authentically and genuinely.
This type of change can be both exhilarating and disconcerting at the same time. The downside of discontinuous change is that we can be easily drawn to the hope, glamor and star power of the promise of instant gratification and quick fixes. The allure of get rich quick schemes, diet pills, instant banking, instant messaging, freeways, fast food and finding the “one and only” who will finally make your life better beckons us compellingly like a siren leading us on to the rocks of disappointment. Sometimes we want and expect discontinuous change to occur but with very little effort on our part, like winning the lottery.
Indeed, we are sometimes even suspicious of discontinuous change, particularly when the change is very sudden and very dramatic, and when we can’t really discern the triggering events, some of which may be very small.
We are used to seeing a logical order to things and we tend to place greater stock in changes that we can connect to a long string of previous efforts. But these types of sudden, overnight changes are real. They do happen, and they often open the door to exciting new possibilities that then need to be brought forth into existence and strengthened and nourished through consistent, persistent, frequent steps taken forward in time. Alternatively, we can also think backward in time and say that these types of discontinuous changes may be the result of a long series of steps taken gradually over time until a sudden shifting occurs.
This leads us to the second type of change, continuous change, which is more gradual and comes about as we slowly and persistently build upon the foundation of previous behaviors and habits. Continuous change in relationships could be summed up in the words by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved.”
Put another way, continuous change is about three words: practice, practice, practice. A child learning to play the piano experiences continuous change for the most part, except, perhaps for those inexplicable occasions when that same child suddenly takes several leaps forward in ability, seemingly overnight, as though the brain remained busy forging, cementing and strengthening a multitude of new connections while the child slept, stimulated, perhaps, by the continuous hours of practice.
While brief, exhilarating moments of clarity and vision give us hope and renewed confidence in our ability forge ahead, sometimes such changes can be short-lived. I have heard many couples describe how they attended an intensive, weekend couples retreat, experienced significant and dramatic breakthroughs in their relationship in a short amount of time, only to fall back into familiar, self-destructive patterns as time went on.
Perhaps this is because the intensity and exhilaration of discontinuous change, needs to be coupled with the repetition, consistency and persistence of continuous change, with small, gradual, consistent shifts in our thinking, attitudes and behavior that help us to grow and improve over time. Many of the great things that have happened in one’s life are often the result of a lot of little things done consistently, persistently, over and over again, over a long period of time. As Bruce Springsteen sang, “From small things, big things one day come.”
If discontinuous change and continuous change were like your first cousins; the one would be charming, compelling, funny, always with a new interesting story to tell, a new adventure to live, while the other would be stable, dependable, predictable, the one who always knows how to make things happen and the one you could count on in a crisis, and neither one of them would you ever want to be without in a pinch or at a family gathering.
The stories of sudden, transformative shifts in people we read about in books and hear about in our circle of friends remind us of the extraordinary potential within each of us, the capacity to let go, open our hearts, and embrace the unfamiliar. These moments are like bursts of fireworks in the night sky, illuminating the path ahead. They are exciting, inspiring, exhilarating. I love those moments when they come in therapy. They beautifully bring to light the wondrous potential of the human spirit. But, just as essential, are the steady, persistent rhythms of continuous change, the everyday practices and small shifts that steadily mold us into better versions of ourselves, the quiet undercurrents of personal evolution. In the end, if continuous and discontinuous change were your lifelong companions, one would be the adventurer and the other the dependable guide. Each one is of value to us.
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