Being seduced by the comfort of routine and the known is one of the ways we limit ourselves and inhibit social change.

Conservative thinking on both a personal and political level may feel safe, but can nurture stagnation.

Doing more about our inertia, we can grow more effectively toward who we want to be, and help our institutions evolve.

In his book on personal development and achievement, Unhypnosis, Steve Taubman writes that some people experience “atrophy of imagination” from a “continued repetition of an unsatisfactory life script... a rut is a grave with the ends kicked out. You have sacrificed your life in the name of comfort, yet you have far less comfort than those who risk and strive.”

In his recent op-ed essay The Meaning of Sarah Palin, author and psychotherapist Peter Michaelson makes a number of stimulating observations about social and personal change.

He writes, "Sarah Palin claims to represent change and reform. But devoted conservatives know, deep in the brain stem, that if elected she’ll protect them from the need for personal change. That’s what they really love about her.

"Conservatives are famous for their fear of change. It’s true that social and economic changes can be frightening, even for the strongest people. But it’s inner change that really terrifies Palin’s fans.

"What happens if they become new, refreshed, awakened individuals? Not only will they have to give up their petty selves and precious resentments, they could experience the terror of becoming liberals."

He continues, "Social change and personal change go together. For instance, Wall Street titans of self-aggrandizement don’t become decent human beings without the overthrow of their compulsions and egos.

"Racists don’t become secure, compassionate people without big rumblings and tectonic shifts occurring along their psyche’s inner plates. Military hawks don’t become successful diplomats without an uprising by their brain’s neurons.

"Palin is not charismatic as much as she’s the cheerleader for the superficial perspective of life. She’s the poster-girl for evolutionary stragglers who want her around as a model of how to ignore reality and pretend they’re as evolved as God wants them to be."

From The Meaning of Sarah Palin.

    Ch-Ch-Changes

The current politicial rhetoric about "change" reminded me somehow of David Bowie's song Changes. Published on an album in 1971, it still has resonance:

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware
of what they're going through

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don't tell them to grow up and out of it
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Where's your shame
You've left us up to our necks in it...

   Ruts vs grooves

Dancer Twyla Tharp in her book The Creative Habit makes a distinction between a rut - doing something repetitively, even when it doesn’t work - and grooves, which are helpful and nourishing pathways that can lead to new creative insights and work.

Psychologist Kenneth Christian in his book Your Own Worst Enemy: Breaking the Habit of Adult Underachievement describes a number of high potential people who keep following patterns that are self-defeating, such as focusing totally on minimizing risk, avoiding situations in which they might fail: “They gravitate toward occupations, relationships and activities that do not present serious challenges or reflect their real interests,” he writes.

      Inner Passivity

Definitions of passivity include "chemical inactivity, esp. the resistance to corrosion of certain metals when covered with a coherent oxide layer," and "the tendency of a body to remain in a given state, either of motion or rest, till disturbed by another body; inertia."

Peter Michaelson describes in his book The Phantom of the Psyche: Freeing Ourself from Inner Passivity how this works emotionally.

"Each of us is under the influence of inner passivity," he writes. "The presence in the psyche of this emotional element limits the flow of our creativity, hinders our self-expression, and impedes the development of intimacy with others. It interferes with our attempts to connect with and to express our higher values of courage, integrity, compassion, and love."

He says "we all hold on to negative emotions and create our own misery and defeat. The passivity I am referring to is much more than the experience of being weak, shy, and timid.

"This book goes far beyond a discussion of wimps and weaklings. Neither is it about the introverted personality type - an extrovert can be just as passive in the sense I am discussing in this book."

He explains, "This passivity is an inner determination to replay and re-experience unresolved feelings that go back to our childhood. In various situations in the present we feel refused, deprived, controlled, overwhelmed, helpless, and discounted.

"In childhood we interpreted some of the actions of our parents and siblings through these same feelings. Now as adults, we color the evidence in a given experience, creating the impression that we are indeed being unduly deprived, refused, overwhelmed, and made helpless and ineffective, when in fact the problem is our own inner determination to feel this way."

He notes, "Our inner passivity plays tricks on us and presents us with challenging conundrums. In one aspect of passivity, for instance, what we most desperately feel we want is often what we are emotionally attached to not getting."

"We will hurt ourselves and others, sometimes tragically, trying to get what we are attached to not having. Or we will urgently feel the need for a sense of control and power, and act out inappropriately, in order to cover up our readiness to experience some situation in a passive manner."

Source: QuestforSelf.com

But sometimes a kind of passivity may actually support our inner growth, as Michael Eigen, PhD writes in the Introduction to his book The Sensitive Self.

"Waiting, patience, a certain passivity are important in order to let impacts build and unfold: sensitivity grows around them and they stimulate growth of sensitivity."

[The image (from the book The Happy Introvert) is from the Highly Sensitive site.]

   Transformation and courage

Therapist and life coach Martha Beck has pointed out, "Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis." [O Magazine, January 2004] 

One of her books is Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live.

Tama J. Kieves, an honors graduate of Harvard Law School, left her position with a large corporate law firm to become a national life/work and creativity coach.

In her book This Time I Dance!: Creating the Work You Love, she writes about the making the journey of change and personal growth:

That level of change may demand much courage, dealing with fear, and willingness to expand or reshape our self-concept, and to understand the ways we self-limit our personal growth.

Maybe growth is basically a matter of our willingness to risk the new.