Life as a Transformative Learning Process

 by Pettis Perry

Transformation as a Natural Life Occurrence 

Over the course of our lifetimes transformation is going to occur in one of two ways. It is going to occur with us as active and intentional agents of transformation. Or, it is going to occur with us as passive participants going along for the ride. In either case, it is going to happen. With odds such as these it makes logical sense to be an active agent of transformation by acting with intention to manifest what we want in our Life journeys.

Developing a foundational understanding of how transformative processes result can go along way towards reducing the stress that naturally occurs when we feel as though our individual worlds are falling apart at the hands of the traumatic events we encounter as Life simply happens. This fact became blatantly important to me as I learned to confront my own demons. My own experiences taught me that the more I understood transformative processes the more coping skills I developed to work through the very traumatic experiences I encountered in my own Life. In the process one thing that emerged as an absolute certainty was that the foundational understanding of transformative processes literally became my tipping point to stop the dread and to begin turning my life around to create what I have now. What I learned has also enabled me to create new frames of reference for the ongoing  traumatic events occurring in my own Life.

Paolo Friere (1921-1997)

I first became aware of transformative processes during the 1970s while working on my undergraduate studies. That is when I was introduced to Paolo Freire through his work The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Paulo Freire (1921-1997) was a Brazilian educator interested in why some children who were raised in the poorest of neighborhoods succeeded while others did not. He used the term contientization (". . .developing consciousness. . .that is understood to have the power to transform reality. . ." Taylor, 1993 as cited in Infed) to explain the critical consciousness awakening processes. He believed that learning comes from the lived experiences of people creating an emerging critical consciousness that shapes what become new paradigms to explain how our individual realities of the world work. This process of Becoming and forming critical consciousness produces the need to take control of  changing our living conditions and therefore prompting us to take action. 

Jack Mezirow (1991) and other psychologists expanded upon Freire's critical consciousness work to identify 9 phases of transformation. According to Mezirow (1991) transformation occurs through 9 phases initiated by what he called a disorienting dilemma which could be anything that knocked us off balance. A disorienting dilemma could result from the birth of a child, the death of someone close to us, the loss or gain of a special friendship, job loss or gain, undergoing training or education, receiving personal or professional feedback, or some other significant experience that impacts us deeply enough to shake us up through its significant meaning.

Once we become disoriented, as biological creatures our bodies want to regain and maintain homeostasis (its equilibrium).  Therefore, every time something comes into our lives to upset our equilibrium we struggle to regain our balance by exploring the meaning of the disorienting dilemma through our own unique ways of processing information and experiences. How well we are able to manage our disorienting dilemmas and how quickly we are able to regain our equilibrium is a function of the severity of the disorienting event and our capacity to psychologically and physically cope with the event. The better shape we are in psychologically (including socially, emotionally, and spiritually) and physically the better we are able to cope with the  disorienting events we are sure to encounter along our life paths.   

The Phases of Transformation
  
Phase 1 -- Self-examination

The disorienting dilemma triggers our emotions including grief, anger, self-doubt, fear, etc. We can choose to attempt to suppress those feelings or to confront them. When we opt to suppress our feelings we place ourselves in a position of having those feelings continue to surface throughout the course of our lives until we finally confront them and try to mitigate their impacts. 

Therefore, realistically speaking, childhood traumas that are left unresolved can continuously resurface well into the later stages of life causing substantial and prolonged pain and suffering (often resulting in acts of self-sabotage) until they become resolved. In extreme cases the traumas can contribute to significant physical and mental health problems. 

As an example, when we covet being a parent then we are likely going to see becoming a parent as the change we want to make and as a wonderful opportunity filled with loving commitments to be fulfilled by the experience. Any disorientation under these circumstances are, generally speaking, met with joy and expectation. 

On the other hand, when we do not want to become a parent, but nonetheless find ourselves in a position of becoming a parent, then we are likely going to find dread when considering the prospects of parenting. In either case, learning to become a parent will be a disorienting dilemma for most people because of the stress produced by becoming and being a parent. 

Phase 2 -- Critical Self-assessment

The difference can be seen for the parent who wants to be a parent with the disorienting dilemma presenting itself as an exciting opportunity for a wonderful new future with lots to learn. Parents who do not want to become  parents could find themselves feeling absolute dread with the thought of becoming parents. This dread can produce one or more disorienting dilemmas (e.g., having responsibility for someone else when you are not psychologically prepared or motivated to do so) and thereby producing sources of severe conflict such as feelings of being trapped by the new responsibility that you do not want.

As we move from suppressing our feelings towards increasing the desire for self-examination we move towards freeing ourselves from the demons that hold us back through acts of self-sabotage. For example, becoming a parent changes our views of the world in extraordinary ways e.g., moving from selfishness to selflessness, balancing between home-work life issues, and moving children from discipline to self-discipline, etc.

(2011) The Hockey Center, Powassan, ON

At the point of self-examination we choose how we intend to respond to the dilemma. Was the dilemma created by some truly random event? If it appears that it was a truly random event, then we have to accept the event as a natural consequence of living. 

However, even when events appear to be purely random, they might very well not be as they appear. For example, if we track the story of the decisions that caused the dilemmas to occur in our lives we might very well find that a series of moment-to-moment decisions placed us in the position that produced the dilemma.

For example, when I was in junior high school I was hit by a car in front of my house. I was struck broadside by the vehicle with sufficient force at the point of impact to knock me into the air to produce a landing some 75 feet from the vehicle. When I regained consciousness I was screaming at the top of my lungs trying to get my mother's attention because she was inside our home and did not see what happened. 

As my awareness came back I saw that my head was a few inches from the concrete curb lining our property. Had I hit the curb with my head, it likely would have killed me. When I looked back at my bike, I saw that it was pinned at a 45 degree angle under the front bumper of the vehicle. I knew had I not had the presence of mind to kick my leg closest to the vehicle into the air above the height of the handle bars, I would have been pinned between my bicycle and the bumper which also likely would have killed me. Luckily, I survived the incident with scrapes and a badly bruised butt which apparently absorbed the bulk of the impact--I must have literally been thrown off my bicycle in the exact position in which I was sitting.

This incident produced a framework for a disorienting dilemma for me to resolve. I blamed the women who hit me for not seeing me because she was not looking where she was driving. She never saw me until I screamed "LADY!" just before she hit me. She did not react in enough time to break the momentum of her vehicle which struck me at about 30 mph. The dilemma emerged because, although my mom never yelled at me, she let me know her displeasure by saying "If you had eaten the dinner I prepared for you, rather than wanting to go to the store to get something else to eat, you never would have been hit by that car." Unwittingly (or not), she planted a seed that would not germinate until several decades later as I was looking back on my Life in my efforts to resolve my feelings about the major events in my Life. 

This was an exceptionally powerful teaching moment. My mother was right: Had I not made the decision to go to the store I would not have placed myself in a position to be hit by the car. As I have gotten older my lessons have provided 20-20 hindsight for me to track my acts of self-sabotage and general decision-making patterns to many of my major Life dilemmas. I have since learned that I have greater control over both the positive and negative things occurring in my Life than I had previously understood. 

Phase 3 -- Recognize that Discontent and Transformation are Linked 

In addition to learning about my own mortality at a very young age, my accident taught me many years later that each decision we make on a moment-to-moment basis conspires to produce the major events in our lives. While in college I held enough experiences to begin understanding how my ongoing decisions were connected to the outcomes manifesting in my Life. My decision to study social sciences (the various studies of human behavior) proved to be fortuitous providing lots of opportunities for me to explore my own behavior and to learn that my own evolution was going to require a lifetime of serious study.  

(2011) The Traveler, Vancouver Airport, B.C.

During one of my darkest nights of the soul my mentor taught me that I was precisely where I needed to be at that particular moment. At first, I did not understand what she was telling me. She was telling me to embrace the pain and suffering as my teacher at a moment when I wanted to run from it. What she helped me to learn was that precisely because I was disoriented I was in a position to transform my Self into something more magnificent. My dilemma was in fact my teacher, and it was teaching me about transformation and living with intention (see our December 12, 2011 Life blog Living With Intention).

Phase 4 -- Explore Options

A basic manufacturing axiom is that form follows function which means that we have to understand a thing's function before we can design it. Asking, what part of the problem am I? Why is this happening? How did this happen?  What is the true magnitude of the problem? are all good questions to ask in order to frame the scope of the problem. Once we frame the problem we can exert energy to resolve it by exploring our options. The caution here is to identify problems and not simply their symptoms. For example, continuous anger (symptom) might be the result of being put down or abused as a child; an unhappy marriage (symptom) might be the result of the marriage having served its purpose; and not finding the job you want (symptom) might be the result of  working in the wrong type of work preventing you from following your true Life path--the purpose you were born to serve. 

During this phase, feelings of  guilt might erupt because we did something to self-sabotage, we were fired, failed to resolve unfinished business with someone who has now passed away eliminating opportunities for obtaining closure, or any number of other events that throw us off balance.What is absolutely important here is to search our inner most Self  to seek what truly makes us happy.

The purpose here is to maximize our creative capacities to identify as many options as possible. The trick is to do this without convincing ourselves beforehand that it is impossible to achieve one or more of the things we have on our list.  

Proactive engagement with disorienting dilemmas changes problems into opportunities. As we begin to change our frame of reference from problem to opportunity we are then able to more freely explore our options to create new ways of Being. Identifying our options serves as a prerequisite to transforming a disorienting dilemma into a new plan of action that will lead to a new way of Life.

Phase 5 -- Plan a Course of Action

(2011) Steve Powers, Bellingham, WA

Once we have identified where we are and where we want to go we can identify the gaps between the two points and then create a plan of action outlining how we intend to get from point A to point B. Making the journey between the two points offers opportunities to acquire new knowledge in preparation of completing the transformative process.

Getting from one place to another requires at least some level of planning. Just as we develop shopping lists, use GPS or MapQuest, and plan our days in any number of ways, we have to create the plan and then work the plan. 

When a disorienting dilemma is confronting deeply held beliefs and emotions the impact can be exceptionally traumatic for even the strongest of personality types, buckling the knees of even the strongest of  people. At this point we have a couple of choices: We can plan to confront our deepest held fears, we can try to live in denial that they exist, we can deny that we had anything to do with creating them, or  we can convince ourselves that they resulted by someone else's hand. Living in denial will result in the recurrence of similar events forcing us to confront them repeatedly until we resolve them and get them behind us. Therefore, as adults, accepting ownership for our Life events, living with intentionality to manifest what we want, and planning a way out of our dilemmas is proactive rather than reactive making the act an intentional act of transformation.

Phase 6 -- Acquire New Knowledge

The more proactive approach is to learn how to work through the emotional pain enabling us to move towards a Life free of our troublesome burdens. Thanks to one of my colleagues and mentors Dr. Suzy Ross, I have come to know this process as riding the dragon to confront my demons.

(2011) Cabo San Lucas

By confronting our demons we are forced to resolve them through deep reflection and ultimately forgiveness of Self and others. For example, a person reconciling many years of abuse may find themselves having to forgive their own responses to the abuse or other persons involved with committing the abuse. A person who has been a survivor of such abuse has to also resolve residual anger and even embarrassment from whatever events they encountered.  

Learning to truly understand the dynamics of our situations requires acquiring new knowledge for us to see our worlds differently. We can obtain that knowledge by engaging experts in discussions, reading books, taking courses, engaging training programs, etc. Nonetheless, what we have to come to know is that whatever we were doing beforehand simply wasn't working and needed to change by acquiring  new knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Phase 7 -- Explore New Roles

By acquiring new knowledge and learning new ways of Being we are able to try on new roles and develop new competencies. As a result, we might take on a new and challenging position, take on some hidden fear with the intention of overcoming it, or find ourselves thrown into a situation which requires a baptism by fire.

Each new experience provides opportunities for us to practice what we are learning. By exploring new roles we can test our new knowledge and skills as we develop new abilities through practice. As we deploy our new behaviors we can watch to see how well they fit with what we want to create for ourselves. It is literally like trying on several suits of new clothes before buying the one you most like. If you don't like what you see you simply try a new role.

In my own case, while fully engaged in my own dark night of the soul I decided to make a major shift in the role I played at work. I went from being "the employee voice" and defacto leader of the department to being a silent participant. My changing the way that I behaved (without saying anything to anyone) changed the way that others in the department behaved. What I learned from this test was that I could reduce my own energy output and still achieve my same objectives--change in our department--because others picked up the slack. The other thing I learned is that we never left a meeting without me being asked what I thought about the discussions. This opening allowed me the advantage of having listened to all of the input before offering my own. This change took me out of the spotlight and therefore I was no longer a target in my department because I was no longer the sole bearer of all of the bad news. More importantly, my shift facilitated leadership practices being expressed through my colleagues: They grew to take on the challenges making them more self-sufficient. This was a valuable Life lesson--the more you do, the more others will let you do.

(2011) Shogun, Buffalo, NY

Phase 8 -- Build Competencies and Self-confidence

Part of the learning process is practicing what we have learned as we take on new ways of Being. Learning and practicing new competencies provides new potential skills and abilities. A couple of easy examples to illustrate this point is when I was in the Navy learning to fold clothes the Navy way and then later working as a custodian. Although I learned to fold clothes as a youngster, the Navy taught me a much more efficent and spacing saving method which carries over today. Additionally, during the early years of my career part of my work responsibilities was that of custodian. The two skills sets came in handy throughout the rest of my career as an executive leader with facilities and maintenance responsibilities.

We use trial and error to identify and then practice the most comfortable new roles to assume during this stage of evolving to become a transformed and more enlightened Being (more informed). As we become more certain about our new way of Being we have to continue increasing our competencies in key areas in order to increase our Self capacity to support this new way of Being and to place ourselves in a position to maximize future opportunities we cannot yet see e.g., working on my Masters degree made it possible for me to take advantage of an emerging opportunity to continue my education in order to get my doctorate. Little did I know it at the time that three years later I would  find myself teaching full time at a large College where I would meet someone who would become my spiritual teacher during one of the most dark nights of my Life. Now, twelve years farther down my path I have the best job in the world teaching for a university that allows me to live almost anywhere in the world.

The point here is that I never intended to get my doctorate until the idea emerged at the suggestion of one of my teachers in my Masters degree program. I was perfectly contented with my work and Life at the time and making some sort of a career change was nothing more than a passing thought. 

The single most important lesson from my Life training course, described above, has been that we never know what wonderful things might emerge along our journey but we have to be prepared to take advantage of them when they do occur. Opportunities manifest frequently, but they are fleeting. We have to learn to recognize them and when the door opens  to be prepared to walk through it; and through preparation we will have the confidence to take the next step that could literally change our lives in wonderful ways. 

In my case, the college job opportunity would never have been made available to me had I not had my doctorate and, therefore, my life would be very different today. With 20-20 hindsight I can now see that everything that has occurred in my life has led me to this precise moment with an ability to write this blog.

By approaching disorienting dilemmas with intentionality to learn from the experiences offers us growth opportunities because they become viewed as part of nature's way of illuminating our imperfections, so that we can learn from them. In this way, stumbling blocks literally become stepping stones.

Phase 9 -- Integrate the New Perspective As Part of a New Way of Being 

Over time we become a newly transformed Being because we have acquired new information, fully integrated new coping skills, created new ways of viewing our lived experiences, and absorbed new experiences into a more fully evolved (enlightened) Self  who is then more capable to manage through the next disorienting dilemma we encounter.  In the process, we also transform the ways in which we live on a day-to-day basis enriching the overall Life experience from moment-to-moment.

(2011) Jacquie Perello, Cabo San Lucas

To live a more enriched and meaningful life we have to reconcile the fact that there is nothing in our way but ourselves. Therefore, when we get out of our own way all sorts of miraculous things begin to happen. It is so simple yet we make it so difficult. Our very happiness is only a frame of reference away from any present thought. By changing how we view what happens to us as a natural occurrence of Life events then we are able to accept that transformation is a Natural Life occurrence to be embraced. Once we embrace transformation as a natural Life occurrence then we are able to capture its essence and actively use it for our own purposes to create a meaningful Life for ourselves. 

In the end, the choice is ours to do with Life what we will--good, bad, or indifferent--we own it whether or not we like it. To that end, I don't know about you, but in my case, I'm aiming for the farthest edge of the Universe.

Namaste, fellow traveler! 

 References

Acknowledgement: Paolo Freire retrieved December 16, 2001 from http://www.google.com/search?q=paolo+friere+pictures&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=fZM&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=zMTrTpL2KKiSiQKJgKnMBA&ved=0CCQQsAQ&biw=1138&bih=512 

infed. http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-freir.htm   

Mezirow, J. Transformative learning: Theory to practice. New Directions for Adult & Continuing Education. (74). 

Mission to Learn (n.d.) retrieved November 30, 2011 http://www.missiontolearn.com/2009/05/definition-of-learning/

Taylor, P. (1993). The Texts of Paulo Freire, Buckingham: Open University Press.