Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You," by Brad Stulberg.
Communally, not a decade goes by that we don’t experience dramatic disruptions. Examples include war, the emergence of technologies like the internet and more recently artificial intelligence, social and political unrest, economic recession, and environmental crises, all of which are intensifying rapidly. Individually, disorder events are even more common. Examples include starting a job, leaving a job, getting married, getting divorced, having children, losing a loved one, becoming ill, moving to a new town, graduating from school, meeting a new best friend, publishing a book, earning a big promotion, becoming an empty nester, retiring, and so on. Research shows that, on average,1 people experience thirty-six disorder events in the course of their adulthood—or about one every eighteen months. This does not include aging, the ever-present, ongoing disorder event that many of us futilely resist and deny. We tend to think that change and disorder are the exceptions when, in reality, they are the rules. Look closely and you’ll see that everything is always changing, including us. Life is flux.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of van der Poel’s fluid identity is that he became less fragile to the inevitable ups and downs of his career. He writes that diversifying the sources of meaning in his life helped him “to face the horrific fact that only one athlete will win the competition and all the others will lose; that injury or sickness can sabotage four years of work.” Paradoxically, it was only when van der Poel became comfortable with the idea of change and disorder that his skating became more relaxed, stable, and fun. One day van der Poel was an Olympian training for seven hours. Another day he was a regular guy with normal friends and normal hobbies. Whatever physical fitness he may have lost by compromising some specificity in his training and recovery, he gained tenfold in mental fitness from his newfound freedom and ease.
Describing the positive impact of his expanded sense of self, van der Poel writes, “There was no longer anything to fear.”
In other words, organizations are like individuals: they struggle to maintain their identities during periods of change and disorder. Some don’t change enough. Others change so much that they completely lose sight of what they are. Only organizations that deliberately cultivate their rugged boundaries and then flexibly apply them have a shot at prospering over the long haul.
There is a story of a wise Thai Forest elder2 named Achaan Chaa who held up his favorite glass in front of his students and said, “You see this goblet? For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.” Chaa’s example is a lofty aspiration, no doubt, but one worth keeping in mind.
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