Personal Growth Disaster - Image

If you decide to grow up personally, keep in mind that such growth and your acquisition of new deep values can (and almost certainly will) be accompanied by one and a half to two years of problems, breaks in relationships, conflicts with loved ones, financial losses and other "joys in life." Are you ready for this? Has your coach or psychologist warned you about this? Or just told a beautiful tale about how wonderful the road to a brighter future is?

I am both for personal growth. After all, nature is prescribed for a living being either growth and development, or withering and death. Those who have had enough fervor to go through a difficult period of changes, to reconsider their lives, to admit something, to refuse something, also say that they do not regret anything and their life has become qualitatively different. I believe them based on my own experience of transformation. The attitude towards oneself, the taste of life is changing. There is a feeling of inner integrity. When asked if they could play back, they would have done the same, the answer is always the same: "Yes." I have not heard any other answers.

What else unites these people? Perhaps, the willingness to fully accept responsibility for their own lives. Ability not to blame parents, spouses, bosses, coaches that something went wrong in their life. But on the path of personal growth, they sometimes went through something that the enemy would not wish.

WHAT COACHES ARE SILENT ABOUT

Did the mentors know that there will be a time of disaster on the way to new values for their clients? Yes, if they are professionals. Not if the guide to a new life is a person who has picked up dubious information or an enthusiastic adherent of positive thinking. Have personal growth coaches warned their mentees about the dangers? With rare exceptions, no. Why? Everything is very simple. You cannot sell a client a period of pain that anticipates happiness. You can only sell happiness in the future and the way to it through rose petals. To increase sales, the goods have to be repackaged in a sweet wrapper of wonders and lightness of being.

Miracles and ease of finding what you want are generally the most demanded products on the training market. We want to get the joy of life as soon as we pay the money. And even very professional consultants and trainers do not seek to tell seekers of personal growth at the entrance that this is most often a difficult path. After all, then they will not have clients. A miraculous resurrection is one thing, Calvary with a cross on the way to resurrection is quite another. Calvary is an unattractive product to sell. But hardly anyone can do without their little personal Golgotha.

LITTLE GOLGOF

Where do the shocks come from? Man is a complex system. And like any system, it strives to maintain stability. This is generally one of the laws of systems. We will return to systems later, but for now, let's talk about something else. Personal growth does not imply quantitative, but qualitative change. This is not mastering new skills, so learning, say, networking skills, effective self-presentation, influence is from another opera. A qualitative change can occur only when the layers of values - the foundation of the human personality - have moved from their place. Can you imagine what the movements of the earth layers are? Yes, a new landscape will appear sooner or later, but the old will never be.

One of the markers of these changes is a powerful emotional outburst, positive or negative. It pierces the whole body. This is either a vivid insight, or a sad discovery, but in any case, the deepest experience.

Imagine that you need to change the foundation of a building. If the stones are removed and new ones are not put in their place, the building will not be stable. Pulling rocks out of a foundation is relatively easy, and many trainers are adept at doing it. It is much more difficult to create a new foundation, and not everyone can cope with it. The risk that the client will be left completely without a foundation is not excluded. In the process of changing the foundation, the psyche, like any complex system, tries to maintain stability, resisting the change in value attitudes.

With one hand we pull something new to ourselves, with the other we try to maintain the stability of being. "I want my life to be qualitatively different, but at the same time I and everything that is familiar to me remain unchanged." It doesn't work that way. Either one or the other. It is impossible to be both an egg, a fetus and an infant at the same time. The more we try to preserve the old, the longer and more complex the time of disasters. And here there is a directly opposite risk: being carried away by a new future, a person devalues and discards everything indiscriminately. What later regrets.

LOWER OR RAISE HAND

The new self and new life do not come quickly. There is no new life yet, no one can guarantee that it will be the way you dream, but problems have already begun in the old one. The environment is dissatisfied that you have changed (they are not to blame, they are also trying to maintain stability and predictability in your relationship). You are no longer interested in your old job. You realized that all your life you dreamed of doing something else, but your dream job does not add up, or you need to agree with a sharp decline in income - you are ready to take only starting positions.

You finally decided to part with corporations and go on a solo voyage, but freelancing doesn't feed you very much, and the clients you dreamed of don't go: you know how to do something well, but you don't know how to sell yourself yet. The thought that you need to engage in self-presentation causes rejection. A lot of efforts have already been made, but the result for which personal growth was started is still not there.

Support and a kind word are required, but most likely, relatives and friends do not support you. And this is exactly the same one and a half - two and a half years, about which I wrote above. Sometimes much longer.

Usually, when I finish a lecture on values, the first thing that comes up is “it’s very important for me, is it possible to work with you.” But as soon as I talk about the inevitable difficulties, there are two or three hands of those for whom the issue is so acute that they are ready to plunge into the process, knowing about its pitfalls. I have great respect for those who give up. This is a balanced choice of a person and an honest answer to the question "How willing am I to seriously change something in my life?" No illusions about an easy trip to a bright future.

But still. If you realize that you are not living your life, consider the risks and losses, scatter and jump over the abyss. But only when you are sure that you have the strength to survive the time of disasters.

EXPERT OPINION

DREAM OR GOLGOF

Good training is a powerful start, the beginning of the path … But why should the path to a dream become a personal Golgotha ?! A psychologist is needed to make this path effective and safe, so that families do not collapse, so that your life really improves, and does not turn into a nightmare of unfulfilled hopes.

Different psychological schools have different attitudes towards personal growth, or rather, to its influence on the person's environment. If you are not ready to "give up everything", value your family and relationships, do not want unnecessary trauma, in this case it is better to choose a systems psychologist or strategic coach. These specialists know how to take into account systemic factors and will help you on the way to the dream of preserving the good that is already in your life that is dear to you. This kind of work is usually extremely exciting and positive, but the main thing is that there will be no disasters in the future.

Irina Udaltsova,

systemic family psychologist