The Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that you can't step into the same river twice,
for you aren't the same person at each visit, and the water is ever flowing. It is a
powerful way to represent the reality of impermanence: Everything is always changing.
Yet so many people have fraught relationships with change. We deny it, resist it or
attempt to control it — the result of which is almost always some combination of stress,
anxiety, burnout and exhaustion. It doesn't have to be that way.
A concept called allostasis can help. Allostasis is defined as "stability through change,"
elegantly capturing the concept's double meaning: The way to stay stable through the
process of change is by changing, at least to some extent. If you want to hold your
footing, you've got to keep moving.
The time to start practicing is now. Over the past few years, the river of change has
been flowing mercilessly, and it shows no signs of letting up.
Societally, we've undergone a pandemic and its economic fallout, the combination of
which has shifted how we live and work. Hardly a decade after the widespread adoption
of social media, a new technology that may be far more powerful, artificial intelligence,
is looming on the horizon.
To thrive in our lifetimes — and not just survive — we need to transform our
relationship with change, leaving behind rigidity and resistance in favor of a new
nimbleness, a means of viewing more of what life throws at us as something to
participate in, rather than fight.