“By unfreezing these specific blocks little by little, the ‘Change’ happened naturally. I didn’t have to force confidence; I just had to melt the specific insecurities that were freezing me in place.”
Episode Transcript
Hi, I’m Cameron Conaway. Welcome to 3-Minute Reframe.
Perhaps nothing brings more joy and suffering to our lives than change. Despite it being a fundamental law of the universe, we often cause ourselves immense pain either by wanting everything to change instantly, or by fighting tooth and nail to ensure nothing changes at all.
Today, we’re reframing how we approach that struggle using the work of Kurt Lewin.
Lewin, widely considered the pioneer of social and organizational psychology, understood that we aren’t just isolated individuals; we are systems held in a state of equilibrium. In the 1940s, he proposed a simple but profound 3-stage model of change: Unfreeze. Change. Refreeze.
Think of an ice block. If you want to change its shape, you can’t just force it. You have to unfreeze it, mold it into the new shape, and then refreeze it to lock in the new state.
I’ve used this concept at work and in personal areas, like in reframing my relationship with my social anxiety.
For years, as an introvert, standing in front of a classroom of smart, hungry master’s degree students terrified me. The dread was heavy, even though my heart felt fuller after every class. For years, I tried to “fix” this anxiety with a sledgehammer. I tried to force the change all at once, demanding that I simply “stop being anxious.” Of course that never worked.
So, I looked to Lewin. I stopped trying to break the ice block and started trying to thaw pieces of it, one at a time.
I began to identify the specific frozen pieces of my fear. There was the piece that feared my background wasn’t specialized enough. I applied heat to that by seeing my non-linear background as a strength. There was the piece that felt anxious about how I was dressed, or how yellow my teeth were, whatever. I worked to thaw those areas, slowly, by dressing and grooming to a certain reasonable standard and then focusing more on the value I provided rather than the aesthetic. It seems obvious and even absurd, but it’s such a human thing (especially with the filtered and advertising world we live in) to get caught in anxiety swirls where we spend more time stressing over the shade of our teeth and less on what’s most important. Those are just a few of the frozen pieces that made up the collective anxiety I felt each time I entered the classroom.
By unfreezing these specific blocks little by little, the “Change” happened naturally. I didn’t have to force confidence; I just had to melt the specific insecurities that were freezing me in place.
Once change begins to happen, then, it’s all about Refreezing. Which is essentially forming new habits to the point where they become your new frozen norm.
If you want to go deeper into this, I’ve published a guide on Change Management, including a breakdown of Lewin’s framework. You can find the link in the show notes.
And today’s inquiry: Where in your life do you feel frozen? And has that part of you been frozen for a long time? Perhaps, instead of trying to take a sledgehammer to that block of ice to force a radical change, ask yourself: What is one small, practical way you can apply heat today to begin thawing one small part of it?
I’ll catch you next week.
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