Change/Magic
Transcript and slides from my talk on Acceptance for Creative Mornings Seattle on May 26th 2023.
A couple months ago I was preparing for a trip to Scotland — my first big trip since having my kid back in 2017.
Before my pregnancy, I was active, thriving on adventure. I started with climbing in college, added backpacking, cycling, and motorcycle riding. I’ve been caught two pitches up in a lightning storm, survived riding single-lane canyon roads in Peru on motorbike, and was rescued by helicopter thanks to a bad ankle sprain.
Otherwise I’ve always been quiet, observant, and a proud introvert and book lover. But I loved the combination of challenge and risk, the mental stimulation.
So the thing about this trip to Scotland, was that I would be traveling with my old adventure friend. I was looking forward to a slower pace, traveling by car rather than by foot, bicycle, or motorcycle.
And yet I still miss those days of heading into the unknown, figuring it out as we go.
One of the big things I’ve had to grapple with since my pregnancy, is how to differentiate discomfort from danger. Several healthcare practitioners had gaslit me and disregarded several severe and even life threatening issues, during pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum, and I lost my ability to trust myself when faced with unfamiliar sensations and symptoms. Regardless of how many times I was eventually proven right, the effect of being made to feel like I was crying wolf had a stronger impact.
Being faced with that contradiction between the trust in my self before and after my entrance into motherhood, I knew I was sick of being afraid in my body. In order to move past persistent physical symptoms I need to get stronger. But the things I need to do in order to get stronger cause discomfort, which I now related to unsafety.
So the week before the trip, I was feeling overwhelming anxiety, and sadness when remembering how different these trips used to be, which in turn made my anxiety and physical discomfort even worse.
I didn’t want this to ruin my trip, and found myself repeating an idea I was testing, that discomfort can be safe, and even beneficial.
Systems Change & Transition
One of the titles I work under is Transition Designer. For me, this means that I hold space for and help to guide the messy work of moving from one way of being to another, especially in systems change.
We can visualize change in an arc — a simplified journey with a beginning, middle, and end.
Then we add a second loop where the first left off. The first feeds into the second. In a forest, that may be a tree living, dying, then becoming food to nourish the surrounding life. Or it may be a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.
So we have a prevailing way of being on the left, and moving right, we have an emerging way of being. Not necessarily good or bad, just the nature of a cycle.
However, an idea has prevailed that humans can and should move through life’s transitions in a steady, predictable manner. Get laid off? Head right into finding a new job. Have a baby, a miscarriage? You’re all set to return to work. We treat each other as separate from nature. Deny our need for transition.
Then, when faced with a change, we haven’t been given the tools to process it mentally or emotionally. We aren’t taught how to take space, reflect. We have been isolated from the wisdom of those before us. Though in our differently connected age, it is becoming easier to find and share that wisdom.
It’s important to connect this cycle of change with nature and ourselves, before applying it at larger scales. Without recognizing that we follow the same change pattern as the rest of nature, we can’t be expected to respect that process elsewhere. And organizations and societies are, at their core, made up of individuals, who each have different experiences, knowledge, awareness, and biases.
This graphic is known as the two loops model of change.
In addition to the loops, it includes various roles and elements, and in following William Bridges’ differentiation, we could say that the loops are the tangible or visible part of the change: adventure, and motherhood. The space around the loops is harder to grasp and recognize. That’s where the psychological transition happens, and where you find bridges, communities, and complexity.
Let’s reverse the graphic to focus on that space around the loops.
This is where we spend most of our time in transitional work.
It is an area filled with uncertainty and ambiguity between two ways of being, or a liminal space.
There is immense knowledge all throughout, and constellations of people and communities, as well as what Dan Hill calls the dark matter of design, things that influence outcomes, like culture, economics, policy, and more. But unlike the dark matter in space, in this context much of it is known, understood, and even designed to be hard to access or understand by those outside of it. Which is why this space is extremely important to recognize, map, challenge, and find partners in.
To enter this space, we need to be open to ambiguity, to trust that while we may not know exactly what we’re looking for, we can find it if we take the time to look.
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This is also where creatives thrive. We are curious, intuitive, experimental, and embrace different ways of thinking and being, not always in agreement, but through curiosity and empathy.
This space is our playground. No matter what productivity culture tells us, no matter how long we’ve been away from it, or even how much we get scared of it ourselves, we know that our best ideas, our best work, comes from being brave enough to be in this space.
Claim your work as a creative act.
It’s important to frame my work as a creative act, especially when it’s labeled as strategy, research, or facilitation. It’s a reminder that not only am I allowed to take time, to play and discover, but that it’s essential to the process.
And it’s my responsibility as a transition designer to protect and honor that time in the liminal space.
In Practice
There is often resistance to the ambiguity and uncertainty. It makes sense to feel that way – while transition is an important part of being human, so is self-preservation and hesitancy when leaving the familiar.
When people are skeptical, how do we get them to feel safe in this process and even lean into it?
What if instead of using words like ambiguous and uncertain, we say mysterious?
It gets to the same idea, that we don’t know what we’ll find or how, but it can ignite curiosity, rather than fear. It feels like you’re preparing for a journey, there’s a drive to explore. In facilitating this work, being confident in the face of that mystery demonstrates to others that they’re safe in this process, too, and they can even be energized by the challenge.
A simple way to step into these projects, or even before they start, is with a hopes and fears activity. It creates a space for everyone to show up as individuals. The activity reveals that we are not alone in our fears, and helps get reservations out in the open.
I’ve found it helpful for mid-project check-ins as well, when we tend to find ourselves reverting to old habits and ways of being.
Slowing down can be one of the hardest things for clients to give way for, especially with the expectation of results and productivity hanging over us. But slowing down gives necessary space to consider consequences and implications over time, and helps to sustain and improve relationships important to the change.
Moving too fast might mean revisiting parts of the project later, incurring additional costs, extending timelines, and at its worst, doing harm. Systems change is complex, and there is so much at stake, as well as so much good to discover, if you take the time to seek it out.
Last fall I gave a talk on using co-design, centering a recent project as a case study. We held a panel discussion at the end with the client, some co-design members, and other project partners. As a followup to the discussion I ran a twist on hopes and fears, where they shared successes and challenges from their experiences of co-design.
What I appreciated was that because we practiced this exercise throughout the project, they were able to write out these candid responses during a live event. The audience got to hear how it’s safe to be uncertain, even be resistant to parts of the process, and come out the other side with amazing results, directly from the client and others involved. The client even spoke to how the value of having someone external to the agency help them shift their standard way of approaching projects, to slow down and see the relational and financial benefits of it.
Throughout this work, there will be difficult conversations. It can feel risky to speak up when you don’t know the consequences. Creating space to work through these challenges in a safe way is necessary to moving forward, and important for the integrity of the work.
Depending on your comfort, safety, and privilege in a particular moment, you may not be in a place to call something out, or you may be on the receiving end of the harm.
From my experience in projects, my recommendations would be to be seek out potential allies in or near the work, be prepared to be an ally by speaking up if you feel like something isn’t quite right or are asked for help, and join an affinity group to find community and support outside of the workplace or project.
Calling out harmful patterns, protecting the timeline, disturbing the dark matter is all a part of this work.
As Peggy Holman writes in Engaging Emergence, “With practice, it becomes easier to see opportunity in disruption, and to choose possibility when facing chaos and dissonance.”
Those who have accepted the need to change, will respect the fact that you spoke up. Maybe not in the moment, but as they witness the results in action they will be proud of the journey it took to get there, and it will cause more lasting change.
Hope
To return to my personal journey. Adventure to motherhood was my change. The transition is the process of accepting and realigning myself in that change.
Crossing through the unknown can be scary. We may not feel ready, or have the proper support, or we’re told that it’s unsafe.
By leaning into acceptance, I can remember that as a human, as a part of nature, I have a right to honor and be in that transition process. As a responsibility to myself.
And by embracing uncertainty, leaning into transition, we can find the constellations of existing knowledge, bridges to alternative ways of being, and find other people and communities to connect with.
Be bold in facing uncertainty. Allow your body and mind to get comfortable with discomfort. Spend time with nature, opening space for your own voice, thoughts, and ideas to come through.
Prioritize time to play in the magic of the unknown.
In order to afford yourself the capacity to see, question, and challenge the dark matter, all in the service of transformational change.
