How to Lean into the Chaos of Change (And Cutting Through Myths of Stability)
Box Cutter Co. Free Issue No. 58
Hard truth: we can’t pause time and we are rarely ‘in control’ of our lives.
Change is constant.
So why so much focus on ‘stability’?
You know… those apparent “stable jobs” or those people who (apparently) came from a “stable household” or “finding and marrying a stable partner”.
The “go to school… get a degree… get a good job…” stable types and stability myths.
The etymological roots of the word “stable” are the ancient word *sta- "to stand, make or be firm”.
Hard truths: shit happens and “stability” is a myth.
Welcome to Box Cutter Co. Free Weekly Issue #57
Great to have a crew of new subscribers in recent weeks.
As the taglines for this newsletter state:
I left a 6-figure career in April '22. Since then, I've built a Solopreneur digital writing business from scratch. It's producing income beyond what I left.
Every week, I share systems, processes and thoughts about building a creative business-of-one.
When I left a ‘stable’ career, steady pay-cheque ($125k/year), great benefits program, and lucrative retirement contributions — many thought I was nuts… stupid even.
“Are you SUREEEE…?” many asked.
Oh, yes! I would reply — sometimes with a few f-bombs included (depending on the audience).
However, it’s not the most recommended approach: the go-cold-turkey from stable employment. (And, for many folks, I’d suggest starting with building some runway first — but it is context-specific and person-specific.)
I leapt with a good solid dose of enthusiasm and trust that I could make this work. Diving headlong into building digital writing businesses and being part of the $250 billion ‘Creator Economy’.
Front-and-centre in my mind (at the time) — and in my discussions — was that I could drive the change that I could drive (and wanted to drive) …
OR… serious change was going to come and drive me (e.g., heart attack, or otherwise).
More reminders in recent weeks of how well-placed those decisions were.
The First Reminder…
The first was a recent phone call from a colleague. It had an ominous tone to it and was the type of call I’ve received a few times over the past few years. Something along the lines of “I hate to be the bearer of bad news…”
A former colleague I’d worked quite closely with had just passed away.
This was someone I’d catch up with by phone every 6 months or so. We’d often joke about carving out some time for a beer or a coffee. Then would get busy with life again… and so on and so on.
This was someone in the latter part of their career who was hesitant to ‘retire’. And, kept taking on work that was meaningful to them. (Little question that the resources were there to retire).
And, then, one morning not too long ago… he just didn’t wake up.
Gone.
I’d just seen him about six weeks or so ago. A chance encounter at an event. And, same thing, we’d joke about catching up for a coffee soon.
There’s been a few of these types of experiences every year in our household. Deaths of loved ones, friends, and colleagues have been a huge motivator of driving change in our household.
We call it “death thinking” (as have others).
“Death Thinking”
It’s not intended to be morbid. It’s intended to be a motivator.
Philosopher and writer Alain de Botton — in writing about “death thinking” wrote about how many thinkers/philosophers in the 15th-17th century kept skulls nearby — in their studies or otherwise. They were intended as a constant reminder of our time-limited offer on this planet.
Death-thinking can be an excellent kick in the pants to stay away from the doomed “I’ll do that when…” dis-ease.
Such as, “I’ll do that when I’m retired”…
Take a look online and you can find a death clock. It can give you a pretty decent statistical estimate of how many days and seconds you have left.
If you’re so inclined, take a look at this and then ask yourself some questions about what you’d prefer to do with that time:
How would you like to spend the hours?
What sort of relationships would you like to have?
What would you like to choose to invest your life energy into?
What would you like to see?
These sorts of thought-exercises fundamentally altered our household in recent years. I abandoned the ‘steady’ and ‘stable’ paved roadways of public sector administration in the spring of 2022. My wife Lisa followed suit this past spring.
We both operate our own Solopreneur gigs (me as a Ghostwriter, digital writer plus strategy, development, education consultant) and her with her private practice (mental health counsellor). Plus we Co-founded an education start-up and social enterprise: Humanity Academy.
(Our tagline is: “There is no one right way to live”)
These are the types of things we were very clear about wanting to do with our limited lifespans. We wanted to design businesses around our passions and our preferred lifestyles (not the other way around).
For years, our lives and lifestyles revolved around careers. Granted, yes, we made some purpose-full decisions, and these careers brought various benefits. But, we felt our souls and passions shrinking.
A Second Reminder
The second reminder occurred over this past week. Our youngest (14) and I were absolutely lambasted and flattened by a fever and cold. A few years back, C-19 did its course through our house. It wasn’t great, but it also wasn’t that bad.
Whatever got us this week was one of the worst bugs I’ve picked up in… I don’t know how long.
One night at about 3 a.m. I was up getting water with a raging fever. At one point, I recall having to kneel down and then I came to shivering on the kitchen floor — in a cold sweat.
Over those few days, I was still able to do some writing. Some reading. And plug away on some work for a client. No specific schedule, or demands, or meetings.
It felt like such a blessing as compared to ‘career’ days. Having to phone in, do the paperwork, re-schedule meetings and then deal with an inbox overflowing upon return. (Often returning to work before full recovery).
Things are on the upswing now, and we tested for COVID, but came back negative. So who knows what plague hit us…?
And, now my wife Lisa is starting into the fever — with several days of misery ahead. These are things beyond our ‘control’. Not much to do other than lean into it, rest, drink fluids.
(which isn’t such a bad philosophy for life).
The Myth of Homeostasis
Most of us will have learned in school about homeostasis. A common definition is:
“the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes.”
And often, fevers are used as an example.
Your body picks up a bug, the body responds with a fever to roast it out, and the bug dies — your body returns to ‘normal’.
But it doesn’t do that. It has changed.
There is now (hopefully) an immunity to that bug — and a heightened immune system in general so that you don’t get sick again right away.
As Brad Stulberg argues in his recent book Master of Change, the myth of homeostasis is that the equation looks simple:
Order → Disorder → Order
This also fits with the etymology (roots) of the word homeostasis, which is an expanded form of Greek homos: "one and the same". Plus, Greek stasis "standing still, a standing”, which comes from the ancient root word root *sta- "to stand, make or be firm". (sound familiar)
The idea of undergoing change and then returning to some previous state… is… well… bullshit. We are always changing. Always ebbing-and-flowing.
The Myth of Dynamic Equilibrium
Some years back I was a fisheries technician. I spent a few years tromping up and down streams on the Pacific NW coast. A lot of my work was fish habitat assessment and salmon habitat rehabilitation.
Why habitat rehabilitation?
Because of a century of industrial logging and overfishing salmon had decimated populations.
A term that circulates in natural resource fields is dynamic equilibrium (it’s also used in Chemistry).
In a river system (or watershed), dynamic equilibrium suggests there is a balance between erosion and deposition. A balance between inputs and outputs.
But… it’s also… largely… bullshit.
Humans have become so numerous and impactful in natural ecosystems that we can now refer to ourselves as a ‘geologic process’ — meaning we enact changes in natural ecosystems at a scale which usually takes geologic ages (e.g. rock formation).
And, we’ve done it in a mere few thousand years.
For example, in the 1990s, scientists learned about what Indigenous peoples had been saying for eons — the salmon that returned to spawn in rivers and then died there — were massive pulses of nutrients for the surrounding forests and critters in them.
Decimating salmon populations so that they no longer returned to spawn and die — essentially starved the forests of critical nutrients.
One of the biggest misnomers used in fisheries work is “habitat restoration”. The idea that humans can ‘restore’ diverse and complex ecosystems is a sad and misplaced fantasy.
And, worse yet, why would we try to “restore” (bring back to a previous state) something that is never in one state in the first place? Nor, were we the critters that created the complex systems in the first place.
Why, such audacity to think we can ‘restore’ these? 👆
(Alas, we humans with well-developed brains and opposable thumbs… but often still rather silly and dumb).
Everything is in flux. Always. And, everything comes to an end… at some point. It’s just a matter of time (and scales of time). And things that come to an end are generally part of a cycle of renewal and reorder.
Remaining ‘Stable’ by Being Variable
A potentially more accurate description of things is allostasis.
Allostasis means “achieving stability through change”. It was a term introduced by P. Sterling (a neuroscientist) and J. Eyer (a biologist) in the late 1980s.
Sterling wrote: “The key role of regulation is not rigid constancy. Rather, it is the flexible capacity for adaptive variation.” (It’s a mouthful to say, but essentially means fluidly flexible, or, flexibly fluid).
During the C-19 pandemic, I was a senior administrative leader in healthcare — and for almost two years I was buried deeply in emergency planning and response (concurrently). A time of huge uncertainties and rapid change - or at least ‘feelings’ of rapid change.
And, as research repeatedly demonstrates - we humans are driven far more by our feelings (especially fight, flight, or freeze responses) than by our SEEKING pathway, which is designed for exploration, curiosity, and motivation.
While the fight, flight, or freeze reactions are immediate and visceral, often overriding rational thought in moments of perceived danger or stress — the SEEKING system is more about a sustained drive toward discovery and learning, which can sometimes be overshadowed by more immediate emotional responses.
I remember hearing the term allostatic load during the COVID pandemic. It was being used to refer to individuals, but it was also being used in a metaphorical sense to refer to hospital capacities.
Allostatic load represents the total impact of chronic stress and significant life experiences. It encompasses the functioning of various physiological systems, each operating at different levels of intensity.
When the demands posed by external challenges surpass an individual's capacity to manage them, allostatic overload occurs. And, this is generally where bad shit happens. It also means the SEEKING system is not engaged — the Feeling and Reaction systems are.
For me, by the time the pandemic was waning — the full impacts of several years in a soul-sucking office environment, finishing a doctorate degree, a complex double-blended family, and then a steady series of family deaths…
… the allostatic load was at capacity (or beyond), and significant changes needed to be purposefully and purpose-fully made. Or, I was bound to be another late 40s male, massive heart attack statistic (and not because I’m not fit and eat crappy food).
We can probably all think of times in our lives when we realized we needed to be the active change agent in our own lives… or change would be brought down upon us.
Agents of Change
Where we live in western Canada, we’ve been going through nutty cycles of winter weather. Not long ago we noticed trees were starting to bud — in late December — as we were skating around the lake we live by.
Then the week before last we dipped to almost —40C. A polar vortex descended across much of Canada and the northern US.
We are now back above freezing and heading to +10C this week. This is highly unusual. Nothing like 40-50C temperature swings in a matter of a week. Creating nutty cycles of:
Freezing → Unfreezing → Refreezing
Our dog has been shedding for weeks, and it’s still January.
It is an El Niño year in the Pacific, which means massive currents of warm water across the Pacific Ocean have huge impacts on the climate and weather of North and South America (and other Pacific bordering countries).
However, the severity of these events is getting worse.
Canada just came out of its worst forest fire (we now call them wildfires) season on record. It was a horrific year.
Funnily enough, social psychologist Kurt Lewin (in the 1940s) proposed:
Freezing → Unfreezing → Refreezing
(as part of his theory of organizational change).
Richard Rohr (Franciscan friar and spiritual teacher) also has a version in a similar stream as earlier — but with a twist:
Order → Disorder → Reorder
Or another way of putting some similar thinking.
Orientation→ Disorientation → Reorientation
The message in these hearkens back to the now almost cliché Heraclitus quote. 👇
… yet the last bit of this quote is often left out.
For yes, we can intuitively sense that a river flows and therefore it’s not the same river.
But, it’s also no different for the person. (and it’s also not the same surrounding environment).
Life = Change (simple as that)
James Clear (Atomic Habits) and others have written about the process of change — such as the ‘rate of’ and ‘possibility of’.
There are some paradoxical elements in initiating change.
As pointed out throughout this post — change is ever-present. Fact.
With that in mind, choosing to make purpose-full changes — try not to over-shoot. Aim high, but be ready to adapt.
Taking on big personal change initiatives requires tenacity — balanced against fluidity and flexibility. For example, think of the failure rates of New year’s resolutions — or at least — a lack of sticking power.
It’s one thing to come to a fuller appreciation and acceptance that change is always afoot. And, another thing to dive full-on into change that you your Self have triggered and agreed to.
However, sometimes it may feel akin to accepting the reality that we are on a giant circular piece of solid and molten rock and spinning at about 1,000 miles per hour while hurtling around the sun at over 100,000 km/hr.
There is no ‘stability’ — just perceived stability.
There is no ‘fixity’ — other than the reality that everything is in flux.
Getting to a place in life where we can BOTH lean deeply into the reality of ‘change is everywhere’… the fluidity of life.
AND, stand with some strength and boundaries, which allows us to channel energy for change…
… is a powerful combination.
Think about it this way.
What is one of the most powerful forces on Earth?
Water.
Yet, water is a fluid — meaning it has both mass and volume… but no shape. What it does have though, is viscosity. This means that it sticks to itself. Not only that, it also sticks to the solids it runs over.
On its own, water simply spreads out, disperses into a puddle (sticking to itself) and then evaporates.
However, put some channels on it — like a riverbank — or a hose — and we have one of the most powerful forces on earth.
... including creating power (hydroelectricity).
Approaching life changes with the fluidity and flexibility of water is a highly effective approach. However, without the guidance of riverbanks or boundaries... the flow will simply be chaotic and dispersed... form a puddle and evaporate.
(like those New Year's resolutions)
The most long-lasting 'channels' or 'boundaries' of our personal change efforts come from deep within. These are often represented in, or guided by, core values.
However, it's critical to remember that no river flows in a vacuum. It's deeply impacted by the environments it exists within.
Far too many of us approach personal change -- like a river in a vacuum.
Core values are key things to guide life, but always within the ebbing and flowing realities of the environments around us. Inputs and outputs. Feedback loops.
And sometimes, that environment around us can be a little disordered and chaotic. Similarly, our own little rivers can sometimes feel disordered and chaotic.
That's exactly as it should be.
Order → Disorder → Reorder
Orientation → Disorientation → Reorientation
Or, an idea I'm playing with a lot these days...
Information → Disinformation → Synthesis
Here's a breakdown of these 3 terms.
Information: This is the starting point, where knowledge, data, or facts are gathered and understood in their original form.
Disinformation: This phase involves encountering conflicting information, misconceptions, or challenges that disrupt the initial understanding, leading to a period of confusion or questioning. (which is a good thing)
Synthesis: In the final stage, the individual combines elements from the initial information and the dissonance encountered during the disinformation phase to create a new, integrated understanding or concept that is more comprehensive and nuanced.
Some might suggest this is the shift from knowledge (knowing things) to wisdom (knowing what to do with them, and when).
Order → Disorder → Reorder
Navigating Life's Fluid Currents
Here's the simple truth: Life is constant change.
It’s not about achieving a mythical state of stability but leaning into the flow of ever-present change. Some of this we can control, some we can influence, and some we can do absolutely sweet f**k all about.
Like a river, we're always moving, shifting, flowing — as long as there continue to be processes of inputs and outputs — feedback loops.
Stability is an illusion. Just as a river never remains the same, neither do we. Water that sits still becomes stagnant.
The keys lie in adapting to constant flux, and recognizing that sometimes things will feel as if they’ve shattered into a thousand pieces.
Think of it like a faucet, or a hose, or a waterfall. At first the water exits with shape - it’s all holding together in its viscosity - and then PRESTO it begins to disperse and shatter into chaos.
But… eventually… it Reorders itself.
Returning to the new state. NOT old state, even though it kind of looks similar.
We are NO different.
Let's break it down:
Life's Inevitable Change: Accept it. Change is life’s only constant (ever-present companion). Trying to halt it is like trying to stop a river with your hands.
Navigate, Don't Resist: Life gets shitty sometimes. It’s not about dodging the shit; sometimes it's about learning to catch it and throw it back. Or just sit it in it for a bit.
Be Fluidity: Be like water – adaptable, flexible, sometimes viscous, sometimes shattered into a million pieces. Channel (and put boundaries around) your energy where it matters, but remain open to shifting course when needed.
From Information to Wisdom: Life is a journey from collecting facts to synthesizing them into deeper understanding. It's not just what you know, but how you use it. This is the process of ‘mastering’ things. It doesn’t happen all at once.
How about You?
What do you think of this? Does this fit with your processes and experiences of life changes?
What might you add to this?
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading.
Would love to hear your questions — drop a like, a comment, or re-post on channels you navigate. Thank you to those who do this regularly.
Watch for the next Free Issue of The Solopreneur Series coming this week.
*with thanks to reading Brad Stulberg’s “Master of Change: How to excel when everything is changing—including you”
Yea, often times it seems that can be the case. And vice versa. Often our perceptions are driven by experience, bias, etc.
My favorite parts:
🟢 “These are the types of things we were very clear about wanting to do with our limited lifespans. We wanted to design businesses around our passions and our preferred lifestyles (not the other way around).
For years, our lives and lifestyles revolved around careers. Granted, yes, we made some purpose-full decisions, and these careers brought various benefits. But, we felt our souls and passions shrinking.”
🟢 “Allostasis means ‘achieving stability through change’.”
~~
Humans have always known that life brings constant change.
It's been apparent even in the aging of the human body.
Our current generation needs to learn how to navigate (and not resist) even _more_ changes that happen _even faster_.
Technology brings it at an accelerated pace.
New tools, new careers, new cultural movements invented every year.
So I think a lot of emotional training is needed.