“Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.” – Robert Kennedy

Change does have enemies and Robert Kennedy knew that truth and paid for it with his blood. Change can be dangerous. That is why our natural instinct is to stay the course; stay put; avoid trying something new; leaving well enough alone; being safe; and I could mention another twenty or so excuses. If you are the type that wants to stay in your comfort zone, you will never experience the immense joy that comes from living. In order to succeed we must take risks and that means we have to change. Robert Kennedy said this in the context of politics. He referred to making progress as a nation. The only way to make progress as a nation is to change our point of view, to change the way we govern ourselves, to change certain laws that are unfair, and change the way we deal with the bad guys.

But his words can apply to any aspect of life, not just politics. In my career as a trainer I can say that change is the one thing that is needed the most and done the least. I have seen people go way out of their way just to avoid change. I trained adults in job readiness skills. Let me tell you that there were times I couldn’t even get an adult to change their seat after 20 minutes of being seated in class. That is how ridiculous we can get about change. We all need to train ourselves to be more open. But it goes further than that.

Change is an action word and that means we need to act if we are going to progress. Change is not a theoretical practice of the mind, it implies real physical movement. For example, we may say that we have changed our attitude towards someone, but unless that is followed up by an action towards that certain person, they are only shallow words. Change means to repent. I instantly scare people away as soon as I say that because of the religious overtones. Well you can apply this to religion if you like. All I am saying is when someone says to you to repent, it simply means to change what you are doing. Change requires 3 things. The first is to recognize the need to change. The second is you actually do the action that is required. The third is you maintain the new course of action. Those happen to be the same three things involved in repentance. They say that recognizing that you need to change is half the battle and that is so true in my experience. The changing part is actually a lot less difficult to do than the first part which again is recognizing that you need to change. The final part is easy. It just requires that you keep on doing the new action over and over again. The second part in the middle means you must turn around and do something different to prove that what you recognized as needed to be done will be done. Change is empowering no matter how small it is as long as it is positive. Today, why not give change a chance and perform an action that you know needs to be done in your life. You will be gratified and empowered when you do it!

There is a saying “the only one who likes to be changed is a baby in a wet diaper”. For the most part that is very true. However, people really do like change they simply resist being changed. This may seem like the same thing but they are quite dramatically different.

There are three things I rally enjoy, my wife, my kids and movies. My wife and I love to see our children grow. We are amazed at how easily they go from year to year openly adopting the marvelous changes that go on in their lives. They thirst to expand their horizons and look at change as a learning opportunity. Yet they still enjoy the comforts of having a supportive loving and caring home to come too when the change becomes too great. I would like to for a moment discuss the third thing I really enjoy, movies. They can help us understand the fundamentals of change better.

How many movies did you see last year? Are they all sequels? Some maybe, but probably not all of them. That’s because our brain craves changes that are predictable and categorized. A new blockbuster movie is exciting. Being part of it is a choice we make and in reality it can be quite fun and have profound impact on us for years to come. The dating habits of men were changed for years after “Fatal Attraction”. How many people wanted to be connected to “the force” after “Star Wars” was released?

Change is all around us. Look at the seasons. Year after year the same seasons come and go. The changing season gives us a sense of stability, a sense of predictability while allowing alteration in our life. Starting a new relationship before the winter holidays can be quite enjoyable. Ending one however can be a travesty. A major storm that destroys a community is much like that. Why do we like some change and dislike others.

It all starts in our hypothalamus. There are 2 little pea sized parts of our brain called the amygdala. This little organ acts like a switch which controls our protective mechanisms of the brain for survival. Our brain is constantly taking signals from our sensory channels comparing the input to known stored memories. If the brain senses that, the new input is similar to old data it searches further for subtle differences to reinforce what’s already there. If the subsequent data arriving from our senses is non-threatening then the amygdala stays fairly inactive.

Introduce however, a rapid change that does not conform to the old data and watch out. The amygdala switches, causing a host of reactions throughout the body. The heart rate accelerates, the senses get sharper, muscles constrict and emotions flare. As we developed as a species, this mechanism protected us from physical danger. As we have evolved via technology our senses cannot differentiate between what we see on a computer, television, video game or theater screen and a real physical danger. The film and gaming industry have mastered this phenomenon to exploit our body’s defense system to get us hooked on coming attractions.

The interesting thing about our evolution, the very system that helped protect us in our physical world is the very thing that holds us back in the new world of the mind. This new world had a major boost in 1992 as the open internet blasted into existence. We have moved further into our minds where the stresses we face are, in actuality, quite imaginationally inside our heads. We see something on the computer screen or game television that causes the amygdala to switch into protective action and in the real physical world there is no apparent danger.

Thus begins an irresolvable condition in the body and mind. Add to that, being bombarded with unending information, emails, request from cell phones, blasts from podcasts, blackberries, piped in music at the supermarket, on the bus, elevator, terminal, or train. We are in complete sensory overload right now and then a major shift occurs affecting maybe our income, major relations, or housing and you have to cope. How can we possibly handle it all?

An interesting experiment is, if you place a frog in a pot of room temperature water and slowly turn up the heat the frog will boil to death without escaping. However, place it into a pot of boiling water and it will immediately try to escape. Humans are the same way. There are movements around the world beginning to implement different strategies.

If you want to engage in a serious change initiative, how do you do it? Introducing small step by step process changes will yield lasting results. Try to integrate major change in one setting and BOING —- OVERLOAD! You will also find that different people can handle larger amounts of change in bigger chunks than others. These people can assimilate quicker the positive impact of change and become supporters, those that can’t become resistors. If the number of supporters are outnumbered by the resistors the outcome will be outright rejection. In order to have successful results you must find supporters until either you are so convinced you have achieved success or that you gain enough critical momentum to become unstoppable.

In the book The Hundredth Monkey, the researcher discovered that there is a begrudgingly gradual acceptance for change within any community until a certain tipping point is achieved. After that point the overall acceptance is overwhelming. That critical point is about one third of the population. If you ever are in an audience, notice how long it takes people to clap. Once one third of the room is clapping all the sudden the rest of the room immediately joins in.

So if you are looking to have major change in something you are doing, it is important to find supporters. As you build momentum, you will find mounting opposition until you reach the tipping point then BAM everyone is on your side. You must be patient during the opposition phase. You must have confidence in what you are doing. Even more so, you have to make sure, that what you are doing is for the common good of the group you are changing even if they don’t see it now. Fail that and the group can and will most likely get ugly.

Look for little signs of acceptance amongst the resistors as you proceed. There are specific members of the resisting community that once they accept your change, they actually help accelerate moving to the critical third. As your momentum builds you want to decipher the underlying cause for resistance. Do the people involved or impacted by the change see it as something that is forced on them? Or is it something that they can choose to be a part of? The first causes their amygdala to switch into action causing them to fight you at all costs. The second keeps it idling so they become part of making the outcome fun and enjoyable.

The big thing about change that my wife and kids have taught me is it can actually be a lot of fun. I have also learned like picking a wrong movie it can also be agonizing and long with you waiting for it to be over as quickly as possible. Change is one of the things in life that’s certain. You can choose to accept it and make the best of it or fight it and make it hard. I prefer my kids approach and embrace it for all it has to teach me and find as much laughter along the way. Oh yeah, that’s the other thing I really love about my wife, we laugh a lot.

Social anxiety or social phobia has many varied causes, including biological, psychological and social. However, each one may be intertwined so it is hard to specify exacting ones. Though it is not yet known if social anxiety is caused by a genetic disposition or something learned through family social conditioning, it does appear that it can run in the family.

The first group of causes include environmental and social. It is believed by some social phobia experts that it is possible to learn this from the environment in which you are in. It has been suggested that simply interacting and watching others with similar tendencies can be influential. Also, it is possible that overprotective and controlling parents may develop this in their children and fail to recognize the disorder in them because they too suffer from it and consider it to be perfectly normal. Others think that people may develop social phobias based on a negative childhood event, including bullying, public embarrassment and teasing. Such indicators include disfigurement, abuse (sexual and physical), neglect, speech impediments or conflicts within a family.

The second group of causes of social anxiety is thought to be due to psychological or emotional trauma experienced in childhood. The subsequent symptoms may be the direct result of unresolved traumatic experiences such as car accidents, abuse, relationship breakdowns, humiliation or even a natural disaster. The key elements of that are common amongst all people suffering anxiety as a result of traumas include an event or experience that was not expected, the person was not prepared for, and there was little if anything that the person could have done to have pretended it from occurring. However, such traumas can also run deeper, including a poor bonding between the major caregiver and the person during childhood. The person may well have not learned the skills needed to regulate calmness, self-soothing and focus during stressful events.

The third social anxiety cause is biological in nature, including biochemical reactions, the structure of the brain and the possibility of the disorder having been inherited genetically. In genetical inheritance, most researchers believe that the main part of the disorder is born out of inhibited behavior. Young babies with such a disposition are quick to show stress and fear of unfamiliar situations and people, and as they grow into teenagers and adults, their risk for getting social phobia increases. Also, studies have shown that it may also have something do with the section of your brain that controls fears (amygdale). Through CAT scans, doctors have found that people with this disorder have an excess amount of activity in the amygdale and too little in the prefrontal brain cortex. Biochemically speaking, more studies indicate that an imbalance in the serotonin levels in the brain, dopamine, GABA and neurotransmitters may be to blame.

The most common group that social anxiety disorder sufferers fall into is the second. Each and everyday, many people, young and old, experience traumas, some of which they may well put behind them for many years, or at least they believe, but somewhere inside of them, they have not learned to cope with the resulting trauma, but in fact pushed the emotional side ‘under the carpet’ or so to speak. When this happens it is essential to get medical support and treatment. Such traumas as abuse, rape and other experiences can develop from social anxiety to include even post-traumatic shock disorder, which can attack any person at any time in their lives. It may manifest itself many years later, even after the trauma has since been apparently forgotten.
Though there are many cause of social anxiety phobias, the bottom line is that the result is an unnatural fear of social interaction and a lowered self-esteem that can not only hinder a person’s ability to function in everyday situations, but in some cases hinder the person’s ability to simply live a normal existence outside of their home. Sometimes the disorder is so debilitating that the person cannot even carry on regular daytime activities. If you or anyone you suspect may have this disorder, there is no shame in asking for medical help. This does not have to be a lifelong affliction, nor is it normal because someone else you know is dealing with it by pushing it away. Your family doctor is your best source of relief in this regard.