Change is an Emotion

Coaching someone who is anticipating and living through change is always challenging. It is challenging not because it is a difficult enterprise. It is challenging because it requires the coach to grow with the person. Anything less is just lip service.

Sitting with a client who dropped out of a premier college in London with an internship enviable to most students to tend to his ailing father, I wondered what was the true nature of the client's suffering (and of suffering). There were no complaints or regrets, there was enough information, there was a complete capacity to deal with the ambiguity of the situation and there was a sense of financial security. And yet there was suffering. There was change, complete in its process for all practical reasons and yet completely unaddressed.

Often, in describing change as a process we assume a linear timeline, a set of activities, a stage of certainty after a stage of chaos and ambiguity. What we forget is, what it does to us and demands of us. Change, as I realise and share with you through this narrative, is an emotion. It is not to be processed, it is to be expressed. Like all emotions I believe, it has an evolutionary purpose - survival, social contact and distinction through expression. But what does change, the emotion, feel and look like?

Grief

To start with, grief, I think. Change is a sense of loss of self, at least one of the self(s). No matter, how positive the change, its emotion is still raw and neurotic. Take a promotion, for example. A client who had been a technical lead for 15 years and newly promoted to a functional manager role with a much higher salary, helped me realise that even a promotion has a deep sense of grief to it if you are willing to get in touch with it.

"I loved to do the technical stuff. I miss that dearly. Being a manager means I can't do what those under me do, what I enjoy doing so much. I envy them. But, I think this was long overdue... (being a manager)"

Even the most positive news brings a deep sense of grief with it. To turn a new leaf in life is to say goodbye to the old one. No matter how happy one might be in turning it, there is a sense of loss of leaving the older pages. In not dealing with grief, it creates a hollow sense of joy, a balloon waiting to be pricked. In expressing grief, joy is levelled and replaced by humility - a place of incredible strength and acceptance.

Fear

Not the fear of failure. Just fear of the possibilities and loss of control. And again, no matter how positive they might seem, change almost certainly brings fear. We tend to seek certainty, no matter how blissful or how painful it is. An entrepreneur confided in me when he said this,

I could do this all over again. I am afraid that I am more keen on being an entrepreneur than being a successful one. I am an entrepreneur because I can't be anything else. I never felt as passionate and as capable of doing this than anything else. And to not succeed at it, is scary. What else could I do?

Fear is a powerful emotion. And so, it helps to see the utility of it. And perhaps it's biggest utility is that it is a reckoning (for opening up). One of my own coaches says, "Fear makes us build walls. And having a wall is to fear that it may fall". It is a cycle without escape. While fear is seen in contract to fearlessness. It is more often than not an absence of vulnerability. It is amazing how our fears go away when we become vulnerable, not when we become fearless. Vulnerability is a powerful alternative to a wall. It facilitates engagement, acceptance and exploring possibilities. Having more options is to get in touch with positivity and not fear change.

Love

Love changes everything. Climie Fisher was right. In saying that love changes everything, I see love as the most powerful catalyst of change there is. Often talking of change, we almost never address the emotion of love in change. It is a raw passion that drives change, an enterprising force, vulnerable, courageous and often foolishly naive. It is love indeed. Hear what one of my clients said when she was exploring her struggles in being assertive,

My divorce was the first time, I ever said 'no' and stood up for myself. It was so unlike me. Not even my parents thought it was a great idea. I was so sick and tired of being reasonable and mature all the time. I don't want to do that anymore, not at the cost of what it was doing to me. I have not been sick even once in the last year, I am exercising more and I feel better. I want to love myself more and more. I still struggle to be assertive at work, but I will get there.

The scariest changes are possible when they emerge from a place of deep compassion and a sense of love. Change itself is an expression of one's self-love. It is a deeply personal thing which could be the reason why organisations are so bad at it. I wonder how change management programs designed in corporate offices, could ever tap into love's raw emotion of an employee. Leaders who are great catalysts, I notice, tap into the emotion of love, a personal meaning of change which is communicated with love and empathy. And it isn't just about the communication of change. If change isn't conceived to be a personally lovable and passionate activity for individuals, why be surprised, when it fails. An emotion of love creates a commitment, boosts self-esteem and sees through change no matter how difficult it is.

Change is so difficult to process because it is three emotions co-existing together: Grief, Fear and Love. Expressing these emotions is to change in a real sense and find meaning in it.

• To express Grief is to acknowledge loss, suffering and discomfort
• To express Fear is to be vulnerable, seek help and create options
• To express Love is to find meaning, find a personal connection and be compassionate to one's needs

Do share your narratives, perspectives. Would love to hear your thoughts (comments or inmail).