Mental Metamorphosis: How to Deal with it

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” — George Bernard Shaw.

The word “metamorphosis” is derived from the Greek word “metamorphoun” meaning, ‘transformation’ or ‘change of shape’.
In biology its usage comes while defining a natural process by which an animal physically develops, including birth or hatching, thereby involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal’s body structure through cell growth and differentiation.

Anything which has life, cannot be stagnant or still. It has to be ever evolving, organic and dynamic. Be it this planet earth, animals, human body or mind and memory. While metamorphosis is ubiquitously recognized in physical dimensions of change and development, be it the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly, or the foetus into a new born, there is another dimension which it encompasses. While this dimension may not be so easily visible as physical change, but nevertheless exists as phenomenally in a somewhat non-physical dimension. This existence, we refer to as the “mental metamorphosis” which we as human beings or more conveniently, as animals, all undergo.

Throughout our lives, our mind is in a perpetual state of evolution, experiencing innumerable beliefs, life events and transactions, thereby becoming a subject matter socio-environmental dynamics surrounding it. Our knowledge about the world will go through multiple transformations based on how life events structure and impact our thoughts. Psychological metamorphosis addresses this aspect of non physical change that is continuously going on in our minds.

While change is desirable and essential for growth, if left unnavigated may leave the individual clueless, without direction and psychologically depressed. As we go through the stages of childhood, adolescence and adulthood, each stage reflects to us new dimensions of life and experiences, thereby leaving our minds completely changed and transformed.

Just take a pause here and reflect back on your old self: how you used to talk and feel 5 years back, what was your perspective of life 5 years back? Do you feel like laughing at your own old self ? If yes, then congratulations to you, you have undergone psychological metamorphosis and have grown for the greater good. This phase of transition continues from birth and continues till death but it is most critical during adolescence and early adulthood, owing to the lack of experience with the human mind at this junction of life. No wonder teenagers are so vulnerable and we often hear of something as mid-life crisis.

While change is painful and is accompanied with stiff resistance, the ability to handle this change at any junction of life becomes an act no less than we would call as “an art”.

Some steps to dealing with continuous flux/change or
“mental metamorphosis” are:

Agility

Daniel Kanheman in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” talks about “Confirmation Bias”
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes.
We must be agile enough to acknowledge that life is constantly undergoing change and will be full of contradictions. What we believed in 2 or 10 years back may be completely irrelevant in our current times and our perception may have completely changed from what it was then. This is perfectly normal and a belief once taken, need not be carried with, throughout life. If we try to do that, we will face stiff natural resistance because of metamorphosis.

Plan Ahead but also plan for the plan not working

It is always good to plan ahead however, we must understand that while our actions may be in our control, what is happening outside us is not in our hands and will never go by our plan. Hence, a window for our own plan not going as planned should always be there. In short, be flexible with your plans. Again, its perfectly normal to change, be it a new place, a new technology, a new way of life or a new perspective.

Re-frame your thinking

The mind feeling sad or low is absolutely normal because of undergoing constant change and experiences. The need here is not to avoid those negative thoughts but to reframe them. Once you become aware of negative thoughts, you do not just become capable of dealing with them but now you’re better equipped to shift them to emphasize the positive in them. For example, instead of “I don’t deserve this raise,” tweak the thought to “I worked hard for this recognition.”

Avoid overthinking

Seneca, the Roman stoic philosopher has rightly put that : “we suffer more in imagination than reality”
While your mind is like a weapon helping you go through and grow through this battle of life, overuse of this weapon may be fatal to your own-self. So use your thinking faculty wisely. Over-thinking will do nothing more than amplifying your perceived sufferings. This is a very common phenomenon with teenagers, adolescents and adults in this information age.

Count your blessings

We must understand that the world is not like Mathematics and 2+2 is not always 4. We will lose somewhere and we will gain somewhere but not everywhere in equal mathematical proportions. Our minds are genetically programmed to amplify the negatives and the dangers as against the blessings and the positives. This is because the mind was always vulnerable to dangers in the pre-historic ages. We resonate this approach even today and give more attention to dangers as against the blessings. Just think about it once and count all the blessings that you have.

Embrace Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka in his famous story: “The Metamorphosis” has illustrated the story of a salesman who wakes up one day to find himself transformed (metamorphosed) into an insect. He then struggles to survive with this change. Kafka has attempted to give a metaphorical illustration of metamorphosis in our daily lives by depicting the transformation of a man into an insect, we all at different junctions struggle just like the character in his story, struggling to handle the transformation which happens every now and then.

Embrace the change as you go through, to eventually grow though it!