The Rebirth. A disruptive intervention

“there is no mountain that you will climb, irrespective of the difficulty and pain, that will not take you to a higher ground” – C. V. Magavilla 2007

The Rebirth, is a disruptive but necessary intervention that disengages us from the often paralyzing grip of our comfort zone. It becomes a strategic must in our lives if we want to grow as individuals, companies or even Nation states. 

As human beings, our origin is very telling of our ultimate fate as it finds us breaking out of a ‘comfort zone’ as a prerequisite for us to live. As babies, we get accustomed to the comfort of being in the womb for months on only to be unceremoniously thrown out into an abyss of unfamiliarity called the world. If given the chance, I’m sure most babies would categorically decline this belittling and painful experience! And very much like the birth of a baby, those who survive have lived and will have the opportunity to grow and realize their true potential.

Ever-so-often, in order to fully appreciate the essence of living, we need a Rebirth; we need to get out of our comfort zone and expose ourselves to a state of instability that originates from within. This instability inside us coupled with the instability in the world outside us, when managed well, keeps us in a balance that helps us grow.

The irony is that with time, as we grow, we find ourselves progressively investing in a process that relegates us back to the confines of a ‘comfort zone’. We start to enjoy the comfort of undertaking activities for which we have gained familiarity and consequences are predefined by volumes of empirical evidence. We master processes and develop systems around these processes that make us comfortable that things are under our control so long as they go as per the norm. 

We become defensive of our space instead of going on an offensive and conquering new terrain. When this comfort zone becomes concentrated to the extent that we become insensitive and disconnected from the reality around us, we become the change that we need but do not want and hence the forces of nature start to work against us.

We reach a point where we start to criticize alternatives in as much as at some point in our conquest for growth, we may have also been a much celebrated though unlike alternative. This is the underlying irony of personal and social development at large - the better we become at doing something; the worse we become at learning to do or accept anything else as a viable option. 

Survival through The Rebirth requires that we become masters of learning and adaptation and not just the processes that define how things are done in the present. Sometimes we fail simply because we use old methods to survive in a new or changing environment. We try to move with our comfort zone as opposed to moving away from it.

What helped us to do well while we were in one stage of our lives may not help us do well in another. We have to actively invest continuous learning to enable us adopt and preempt the changes that are destined to happen in our lives. The best education you can give or get is one that not only makes you the best practitioner, but more so, one that makes you an even better learner.

Just like when we are born, and when we grow from being babies to being adults or from being students to being full time employees; though it may not be evident at first, we usually have everything we need to survive outside our comfort zone. It is only until we try to apply ourselves in the new situation, do we truly know what our maximum potential is. When a baby is born healthy it has everything it needs to survive and it will cry intensely until it makes use of the gear it has had all along but never used because the circumstances did not require.

Crying does a lot for the child and is arguably the most important part of the completion of the child’s formation when just outside the womb. In the same way that a baby does when it cries at birth, we need to stretch ourselves so we can fully assume our true potential in life.

In the absence of a Rebirth, we deny ourselves the ability to fully realize our potential. Comfort is a huge set back when it comes to matters of personal growth. Whenever we become too comfortable, we should know for a fact that we have also ceased to grow. In order for us to keep growing, we need this disruptive intervention - The Rebirth; a second/third/fourth/fifth coming; a new way of looking at ourselves and being ready to go into the wilderness and scavenger hunt until we break through onto a higher ground. Remember, there is no mountain that you will climb, irrespective of the difficulty and pain, that will not take you to a higher ground. 

We need to be thrown into the unknown to be able to fully unleash our survival gear even if it will cause us pain as we mine through the ensuing wilderness. Our fate is such that we either choose to forge this disruptive intervention or find ourselves victims of one that is not ours to control.