The Only Thing to Do

expand far beyond the initial concept. Harvard psychologist Dr. Robert Kegan has a term for this—The Transforming Self—and he considers it the highest form of psychological and emotional evolution.

“Every transformation demands as its precondition ‘the ending of a world’—the collapse of an old philosophy of life.”

Psychotherapists call it a “second-order change,” meaning that it’s not an incremental improvement but a change in perspective that reframes everything.

FIGURE 3: There are three layers of behavior change: a change in your outcomes, a change in your processes, or a change in your identity.

The professional does not permit himself to become hidebound within one incarnation, however comfortable or successful. Like a transmigrating soul, he shucks his outworn body and dons a new one. He continues his journey.