Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You

He was dropping the weight of resistance

Hope, writes the moral philosopher Kieran Setiya,18 “keeps the flicker of potential agency alive.”

Whereas homeostasis describes a pattern of order, disorder, order, allostasis describes a pattern of order, disorder, reorder. Homeostasis states that following a disorder event, healthy systems return to stability where they started: X to Y to X. Allostasis states that healthy systems return to stability, but somewhere new: X to Y to Z.

is not so much change itself that causes harm, but our slow uptake of it, or in some cases, our downright resistance and refusal.

The RAGE pathway can only be active for so long before it is exhausted. When this happens, another set of neural circuits, some neuroscientists call it the SADNESS pathway, comes online. The result is despondency and dejection.

With awareness that multiple lenses exist, we can begin to see the world in multiple ways.

The flow represents our fluidity, that we are constantly changing, moving this way and that. The bank represents our rugged and flexible boundaries, which hold and organize the flow, creating a distinct and observable path.

The Sanskrit word viparinama-dukkha is translated roughly as “the dissatisfaction that results from clinging amidst change.” The entirety of Buddhist philosophy is about lessening this dissatisfaction by learning to accept and work with impermanence.

The neural circuitry associated with responding is like a muscle: it gets stronger with use. Neurons that fire together wire together. If you are able to muster a deliberate response9 in a difficult and distressing situation today, you’ll be more likely to do so out of habit tomorrow.