A discussion emerged recently within my Mastermind discussion group about what happens in the mind of a person who suddenly regenerates from a nobody to a somebody. How does a person completely turn things around in their life to such an extent that they're a new person unrecognizable from a previous way of life?
There are many people throughout history who have experienced it and even some we know personally. It happened to Teddy Roosevelt who was ultimately known to be very outgoing, athletic, robust and full of energy but there was once a time in his life when he was a sickly, asthmatic homebody who rarely participated in outdoor activities in favor of an easy bedridden life. He came to a point as a young man to change his situation when he said to himself "I will make my body". His condition at the time was inconsistent with his future desires.
There are other examples and probably the best known is the conversion a Saul from The Bible. In our discussion we mentioned someone we knew personally who underwent this same transformation.
But the question still remains, what triggers the reprogramming? It's a question I've been pondering for years and since the discussion with my friends, I seriously decided to find some answers, so I began looking and in surprising short order, I found satisfying explanations.
A satisfying process I found is:
- Ordinary- The status quo. A person's ordinary life is unsatisfying or inconsistent with his or her values or hopes but he or she is complacent and isn't motivated to change it.
- Crisis- Something occurs in our protagonist's life that forces a reckoning with the status-quo of his or her ordinary life.
- Recognition of other options- Alternative lifestyles, beliefs or values are recognized by the protagonist either discovered on his or her own or presented by other people.
- Engagement with a new option- The person is then faced with the decision to accept the new option which is decidedly inharmonious with the status quo.
- Identification with the new option- He/she accepts the new belief system, mindset or lifestyle and then commits and adapts to it as part of his or her new identity in contrast to the previous lifestyle.
- Transformation of behavior- From this point the new mindset compels the protagonist to display new habits and routines, makes different choices and adopts new behaviors reflecting his or her conversion.
The conversion can arise gradually or happen suddenly and in severe cases the status quo has become completely unacceptable, untenable or unsustainable. It has characteristics of the Hero's Journey espoused by Joseph Campbell.
