Episode Transcript
Is everything all right? That’s what the chief marketing officer Kurt asked me. An hour earlier, I had sent him a draft I’d ghost written on his behalf. I believe we published it at Fast Company or The Next Web, one of those. Anyways, after asking if I was okay, Kurt followed it up with, because your draft, I don’t think it’s your best work, and I know you can do better.
Whew. I remember being stunned into silence. The feedback itself wasn’t harsh. It was actually delivered with real care. Kurt checked in on me as a human being before he critiqued the work, but something in me still contracted and froze. I had busted my ass on that draft, but also knew deep down he was right.
Just because I had worked twice as hard on it didn’t mean it was inherently better than others I’d sent him. And looking back, it wasn’t just disappointment I felt it was disorientation. That’s why I couldn’t muster up many words in response. I had worked with some of the best journalists in the world, published with the most elite magazines, and here’s this person who hasn’t done any of those things, giving me this feedback.
Kind of rattled my ego, brought up all kind of emotions. Such disorientation is actually a stage in the change process. I didn’t know it at the time. In the 1970s, a family therapist named Virginia Satir began mapping something she kept seeing in the families she worked with. Change, even change people had chosen and wanted, often didn’t move in a straight line.
It moved in a shape that looked for a while, like things were getting worse. And she identified various stages. There’s the status quo life, as you know it, stable, familiar, even if imperfect. Then a foreign element arrives, a diagnosis, a job loss, a conversation that changes something. And what follows can be the chaos stage.
It’s not a smooth transition or some calculated pivot. It just feels like chaos and confusion. Performance may drop and you may feel super vulnerable. I see this each day in my students at Penn State. Many are in the middle of becoming. Not sure what’s next. Looking around at peers who seem to have it all together.
And quietly concluding that something must be wrong with them. But, and I sometimes share this with them, a butterfly doesn’t go from caterpillar to butterfly cleanly, right? Inside the chrysalis, they actually completely dissolve into goo. For a time, they’re basically, a cellular soup of pure chaos and vulnerability.
Eventually, with the right kind of support, and enough time and a kind of, tender balance between surrendering to the chaos, it’s happening, and staying open to growth, an integration can emerge. Maybe it’s a new internship idea, a new field that piques your interest, a new way of seeing one of your old behaviors.
So if you’re in the middle of something right now that feels unresolved, maybe a change you didn’t choose, a transition that’s taking longer than expected, feedback that you thought was settled, consider the possibility that you’re not failing or wrong. You may simply be in this chaos stage. In the goo.
Be with the goo. It may be the most honest thing happening in your life right now. Catch you next week.
Show Notes
Don't Just Keep Up.
Define the New Rules.
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