Are there too many things going on in your life? Is life running you when you should be running with it? Is your laptop three operating system updates behind? Are you leaping from one deadline to another with no time for fun or to pause, breathe and reflect? Careening from one crisis to the next? If you are, you’re among the mass of people succumbing to chronic change illness, which comes from unrelenting and accelerating change in every facet of life.
A balancing act
From the lowliest bacterium to the whales in the sea, continual change in our condition, our environment and our life experience is fundamental. On the surface, this appears to conflict with each individual’s need for a stable, supportive environment—stability, too, is a fundamental requirement for us to survive and thrive. But nature doesn’t care if there’s a contradiction. And from the friction of this contradiction arises the stress—the force, if you will, that makes life interesting.
“Homeostasis” is the tendency of any living system to return back to an equilibrium point after it has been disturbed or altered. Our bodies are equipped with all sorts of internal regulatory systems for maintaining a correct balance of temperature, salinity, hormones, digestion, emotions and other vital processes. Every society, likewise, has an intricate system of checks and balances to keep things more or less stable so vital functions like commerce, education, infrastructure and food production can operate.
Homeostasis does not, however, recognize “bad” or “good” and instead perpetuates any state of function (or dysfunction) that has reached an equilibrium. Nearly all people are enmeshed in a complex web of bio-psycho-social forces that keeps them where—and who—they are. As psychologist and author Jon Kabat-Zinn famously said, “No matter how far you travel, no matter where you go or what you do, when you finally arrive…there you are.”
Change is inevitable. It’s how you respond to it that will most influence your life and well being.
Good change and bad change
In life, change can take two forms. There’s “good” change, the kind that benefits us, our enterprise, brings wealth, knowledge and/or power and in general builds us up. Let’s call this “anabolic” (building up) change. Capturing a big contract, launching a successful IPO and winning the lottery are all examples of anabolic change. (Using anabolic steroids would not be a good example in this case.) Then there’s “catabolic” change, which is detrimental and dissipates our energy, costs money without giving a return, takes up our time without conferring benefit, breaks us down and saps our vitality. Examples might include a major illness, a disgruntled employee lawsuit, an IRS audit or personality clashes among office staff.
The funny thing about change is, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative, it always produces stress. In fact, almost as many people succumb to heart attacks, depression and illness after a major positive change (like winning the lottery) as do people who have suffered major losses (for example, the death of a spouse or loss of a job). And the magnitude of induced stress closely matches the magnitude of the change—regardless of which way the wheel of fortune has spun.
A common belief these days is that stress per se is “bad.” But is it really? An impressive amount of psychological research over the past 50 or so years has shown again and again that animals and people who are sheltered from problems and stress grow up with very little tolerance for change and an impaired coping ability. The reverse is also true: those who grow up with (resolvable) stress learn to handle it better and are more resilient in their coping skills. So, the old saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” is correct—but only up to a point.
How much change can we stand?
The rate of change has been accelerating along an exponential growth curve that closely approximates the world’s growth in population. The sheer number of changes in every aspect of life long ago passed the point of diminishing returns. For the majority of executives—and their businesses or professions—externally imposed, non-beneficial change is a dissipative process that’s inimical to individual health and wellness.
More, change as a process has been transformed in western society to an end in itself. Raising the notion that “constant change is the only constant” to the level of a social ideal is, in this writer’s humble opinion, a trivialization of the obvious. It’s become a self-serving rationalization for dubious enterprises and innovations that produce no net benefit for the individuals and businesses compelled to accomodate changes imposed from the outside without compensation for the extra work involved. All such change is adverse to our individual best interests—unless, perhaps, it’s demonstrably good for society in general. Nevertheless, there’s a widespread addiction to change that compels us to race from one innovation (usually technological) to the next on the strength of all-too-often empty promises of more income and/or more leisure.
The response to change
There are many “types” and categories to describe executive personalities. For this column, I’ll narrow them down to just two: executives with “high stress adaptability” and those with “low stress adaptability” (the latter isn’t a pejorative term).
“High adaptable” types deal with change and day-to-day challenges much more readily than do “low adaptables.” Many even seem to thrive upon it, so much so that “high adaptables” may be among the prime drivers of the accelerating change that bedevils organizations today. When dealing with change and stress, the “high adaptables” have a certain advantage. They’re able to narrow their focus to the immediate problem at hand and to motor on through, around and over all obstacles. What’s more, they often believe they’re having a good time in the process.
On the other hand, their low tolerance for (perceived) bull-bleep may lead them to jump ship midcourse. Their prevailing belief that getting 80 percent of the job done is usually sufficient, when coupled with high levels of naive optimism and denial, sometimes puts them on the wrong path—or over a cliff. In interview studies, many of these managers are actually unaware of having much stress in their work lives.
“Low adaptability” executives, by comparison, rely on their thoroughness, introspection, analytical capabilities and propensity to stay the course over the long haul. This group is blessed (or cursed) with more realism and less denial; they also have a reduced optimism that reflects such realism. They tend to meet change head on, encounter resistance in getting things solved and rely on their own strengths of sticking to the task until complete, making frequent course corrections and “gutting out” the stresses they experience. As a result, this group experiences more feelings of stress and has a higher risk of burnout. For this reason, they must develop a repertoire of survival skills aimed at maintaining a wellness-promoting balance of energy.
Choice and control
The Wellness Model of health is somewhat libertarian in its emphasis on individual responsibility and living by the results of your choices. Clearly, certain personality traits facilitate the efficient handling of change. Others will need to learn to exercise choice in response to the onslaught of too much enforced change. You must be prepared to say “No!” to change that’s dissipative and adverse to your organizational and/or personal situation.
Adverse change within your immediate control naturally merit aggressive corrective action. Change imposed from the outside must be rigorously judged for what benefit, if any, it may provide to you and your enterprise, and then responded to appropriately. If at all escapable or avoidable, outside forces that accelerate change should not be embraced. For unavoidable demands, extend only minimum effort before moving them out of your life.
Change, stress and wellness
To allow non-beneficial changes to sap your time and energy, or to recoil from change and stress in general and remain bogged down in a “safe” daily routine, or to delay accommodating necessary favorable changes, are all acts of self-sabotage. In effect, it’s a leap away from wellness. Change that corrects a deficiency in your life, brings in new wealth, corrects a bad habit or promotes a higher level of fitness and/or personal functioning promotes health and wellness. To rise to such challenges, to profit and learn from them, is self-affirming and life enhancing. From this, you’ll gain a new array of transformative coping skills. It’s the choice we all face, regardless of personality type or management style.
Wellness results from a conscious act of choosing one’s path and then making it real. In that sense, as long as we’re fully engaged in changing—being born each minute—we’re treading the path of wellness.
Allen Gruber, M.D., is an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist. He’s been living along the Russian River and practicing medicine in Sonoma County for 15+ years.
