Change vs. Transformation

Throughout our lives we change constantly. We are not the same person we were when we were a child or a teenager or a few years ago or even last week. Every experience we have leaves its mark. However, all transformation is change, but not all change is transformation. So the question we’re working with isn’t “Can I change?” but rather “How do I transform?”

When we make the choice to transform ourselves intentional, and allow it to emanate from the core of our being, we open the door to a ‘journey of personal transformation’ which involves learning how to expand our mind into new paradigms of experience, and directing it towards higher expressions self-hood. We choose who we are going to be, and orient our thoughts, emotions, ideations, and actions towards the embodiment of that sense of self.

To begin this journey, it helps to understand what transformation means in human terms.

What is personal transformation?

Transformation is, by definition, a thorough or dramatic change in form or character—a metamorphosis, of sorts. Although we change all the time, we certainly do not transform all the time. The grand cycle of life and death offers to each of us the greatest transformational experience possible, yet within a person’s lifetime true transformation is a relatively rare occurrence.

Think back for a moment across the span of your life and identify how many times you can honestly say you ‘transformed,’ in that you went through a period of thorough or dramatic change in form or character—a metamorphosis on an external or internal level. My guess is you can count them on one hand. These are instances of ‘human transformation,’ and it’s helpful to clarify what we mean because the meaning influences how we define transformational coaching and transformational work in general.

What exactly is being transformed?

The answer is simply this: our self-concept. We all have a mental image of who we are, an image constructed since birth from a vast range of personal and cultural circumstances, experiences, beliefs, and values. This image is our self-concept. In his book An Overview of Self-Concept Theory for Counselors, William Purkey provides this excellent description:

“…of all the perceptions we experience in the course of living, none has more profound significance than the perceptions we hold regarding our own personal existence—our concept of who we are and how we fit into the world. Self-concept may be defined as the totality of a complex, organized, and dynamic system of learnedbeliefs, attitudes and opinions that each person holds to be true about his or her personal existence.”

Our self-concept—this complex, learned, mental image of who we are—begins to form early in life. Our self-concept is also, because it is learned, a highly limited if not false rendering of who we truly are.

The vast majority of people completely identify with their limiting, ego-based self-concept; they perceive little if any ‘I’ apart from it and its concomitant thoughts and emotions, and fail to recognize it as ‘not self.’ This is what it means to be unawakened or to live unconsciously—we end up losing ourselves in all that we have come to identify with, all that we have been taught we are.

Personal Transformation is a marked shift in our self-concept.

The core of all true personal transformation work is facilitating a marked shift, if not a revolution, in one’s self-concept. The transformational shift that occurs is based on a readiness to dislodge more firmly established self-concepts—to strip away all that does not reflect the ‘I’ that is at the core of being.

Personal transformation is more than the normal course of change, growth, and maturation we all experience by the sheer fact of our existence. It is a revolution of our self-concept, a radical shift in our understanding of who we are and our purpose and place in this world.

This is a journey into our real power, into a discovery of who we are beyond our identification with form and all the layers of our ego-based self-concept.

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