Author
Santa Fe author Rebecca Borland Reynolds will be at Loma Colorado Library in Rio Rancho Jan. 11 at 10 a.m. to present her unique and timely approach to how we think about change based on 30 years of experience bringing about change across disciplines and sectors. Borland Reynolds will be discussing her new work, Thresholds of Change: The Way through Transformational Times.
The following interview with Borland Reynolds was done by the Santa Fe Reporter and is republished here with permission.
By Alex De Vore, Santa Fe Reporter
It has been said that the only constant is change.
We know this intellectually, of course, and we stand on the precipice of transition day in and day out. But how can we handle the never ending barrage of changes we have faced in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic? The political landscape in the years leading up to its global events? Or the bizarre yet crucial current election cycle?
Ask anyone you know right now—anxiety seems to have hit an all-time high out there, and we are all struggling to roll with punches, even if, in any given year, we might change jobs, move or gain and lose love, friends, family, etc. The bottom line is that our lives revolve around change, and at the root of our ability to handle them—or not handle them—lies fear.
Yet, given its presence within our lives, change need not be so terrifying, according to Santa Fe-based consultant and author Rebecca Borland Reynolds, whose forthcoming book Thresholds of Change aims to both demystify our feelings around flux while providing language and tools to better accept the brass tacks reality of our lives: Transition is a fact of existence.
A nomadic sort with roots in Colorado, Reynolds moved to Santa Fe from Italy in the early days of the pandemic, mere weeks before that country descended into some of its darkest days in recent memory (talk about change). Reynolds is a history and opera buff who, across 30 years working as a consultant for countless clients, began to notice patterns in how change plays out. In broad strokes, we might liken them to the seasons, Reynolds tells SFR—or, as an imperfect analogy, think of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief; though, Reynolds posits, the idea that everyone experiences grief in the same ways is outdated. Even so, she says, if we have the tools to identify the onset of transition and/or the ways in which it tends to play out, we might better be equipped to navigate our intellectual and emotional responses in real time.
Thresholds of Change is not your typical self-help book, Reynolds says. In fact, she says, she finds the concept of self-help fraught with idealism and hollow promises. And, she adds, whereas most books she has read on the topic of transition tend to dwell within the aftermath, hers is meant to work like a top-to-bottom companion. With a release date of Oct. 1 and a Sept. 20 author event at the Santa Fe Public Library, we spoke with Reynolds to learn more and include herein an excerpt from Thresholds of Change. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
SFR: What led you to focus on the idea of change?
Rebecca Borland Reynolds: Just so you know, I moved five times before I was 10 and went to 10 different schools before high school. So I was in training from a young age for change without knowing it. Each year it was new, and I’d be very sad, very lonely, feeling ostracized—and it got worse as I was older. I remember my mother saying, “The first three weeks are always the hardest!” And that told me a couple things. Number one, it taught me that what I was feeling wouldn’t last forever, which is important. We can get really into how we’re feeling, but it passes, it shifts. Number two, that I’d been through it before, so I could rely on those experiences for this one.
My change was…gap years before we had a term for that; different colleges—NYU and Hampshire College; I went abroad. I had two jobs after college, and after those two jobs, I finally realized that that I was kind of a change junkie. I started my consultant firm in 1991, and I realized that I liked change. It took me a longer time to realize that what I was doing with people was helping them navigate change.
The piece around seeing change as a process with its own phases and sequences, I didn’t consciously realize that for another 10 years. I was just doing the work. It was coming to me, and I never called it “change work,” it was whatever the client needed.
If there are patterns to changes, are there patterns to how people address, fight and/or accept them?
Yes. There’s a sequence to change, and the metaphor I use is the seasons. There are four sequential seasons, and they go in the same order every time. They may look different ways in different places in the world, but everybody knows them and everybody knows the words for them. But if we didn’t know what winter was, we’d talk about it over and over and we might not realize we need to wear a heavy coat or scarf. It’s as if we named summer “too hot.” Well, not everybody thinks summer is too hot. We’re in a stage, but we don’t know how to react to change. That’s what I do. First of all, to help people recognize what they’re feeling is fine. When we’re struggling with change, we think there’s something wrong, and that feels terrible. But I say there’s nothing wrong, you’re just getting ready.
There’s that common universal sequence I work with and that I describe in the book, and there are also common responses. And there are different aptitudes for change, just like musicality or sports — there are people who are much more athletic than I am naturally. I can work on my body, but I’m never going to be an athlete, and change is the same way. If you’ve got a higher level of natural aptitude for change, you’re going to change more or you’re going to like it, you’re going to look at it like it’s fun. If your aptitude is lower for change, you’re going to feel more nervous, scared, resistant. That’s natural, but we can get to a point where our identity and what we know about the world starts to impede us.
Is it evolutionary? For example, I read that some people are night people because back when we were, like, ancient villages, some would have to stay up to keep an eye out while others slept.
I assume…like why are some people terrified of heights, and why are others not? It’s all in our minds. I do understand there are those human inborn proclivities, but what I am saying is that change is natural to everyone, as is music, as is moving the body—if you want to, you can get better at it.
So we can assume that, like most things, fear is the root cause for resistance to change or trouble addressing it?
There are many people who are not afraid of change, and this book speaks to them as well. Every single stage has outputs and indicators that are positive and joyous, because change is not always bad. Sometimes it’s love. Think of when people are getting married or having a baby, and they’re so excited, right?
There’s fear, yes. And there are many challenges to change, but I’m saying to live your life—don’t live your obligations. We have become very obligated in the world and very guilt-ridden by what other people want and need from us to such a degree that we can get trapped in a place that doesn’t serve us anymore. We have to find a way to have those conversations. We need to honor when our interior place is calling for change, too, and we don’t need to understand it or defend it. People either want to change or they don’t, and if they don’t, it’s usually fear of one of two things: what will they have to let go of, and what in the world is coming?
I don’t want to belabor it, but my mind goes to the dreaded pandemic and the change that came from that. People struggled with that level of change.
One of the reasons the pandemic for me wasn’t so terribly traumatic is because I see the cycle and the stages. I mean, it was terrible no question, but it was interesting for me to see almost the entire world go into The Liminal stage together. It was -remarkable. People couldn’t live their normal lives and everything got smaller, and that’s The Liminal—where nothing happens externally, but everything is happening internally. There is always suffering in The Liminal, but it’s a generative space. I used it to help me understand my book better. I don’t mean there wasn’t awful grief, but The Liminal is about letting go of what was. Change always involves letting go, and every human was letting go of their normal lives and routines.
But change can be so good. In some ways the pandemic activated some beautiful things. We were cooking for each other again. We were sitting outside under the stars and telling stories. We weren’t allowed to do all the restaurant and music and entertainment, but it was a time for going inward. Now, we’ve come through The Liminal, and we’re still metabolizing what that change is about. I don’t think we’re finished.
Can we talk about the self-help thing? Because usually I see those books and think, “Oh, God. Ugh.”
I find them kind of tedious, frankly, because if I get it in the first 10 pages and now they’re saying it over and over and over…I mean, I don’t have anything against them, but I never wanted to call this book a self-help book, I wanted to call it a “big think” book. Thresholds of Change is saying, “it doesn’t matter if you want or like or don’t want or don’t like change—it’s happening.” It’s got it’s own breadth, and if you don’t know what that is, you’re likely going to struggle more than you need to struggle. And there isn’t anything out there like it—I looked.
You break down change into four recurring phases. Tell us about those phases?
Because I wasn’t so arrogant to assume I’d invented this concept, but every model I could find on change was built around our emotional and/or behavioral response to change. And the problem with that is that the response is as varied as there are people and situations. Look, the five stages of grief thing helped whole generations deal with the hardest change we face, which is death, and I thought about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ model—which absolutely helped me when my father passed away suddenly—but I realized her critics said that, because not everyone experiences these changes in the same sequence…I needed to talk about what’s happening with change itself as opposed to how we are experiencing it.
So we have number one—Instigation. Something that was working or existed no longer does, or something starts to destabilize. Somebody dies, gets sick, gets fired. But usually there are signs earlier on that change is afoot. What we want to be doing is looking for what’s happening in our life. As much as we can prepare, we can never prepare ourselves out of the situation.
Number two is The Liminal. This is where the change is being wrought without us doing anything, and that’s the hardest part. The body is trying to get you to stop so it can do the work. When you feel like lying on the couch? Lie on the couch! Change doesn’t get figured out, it’s not a problem to be solved, it’s about growing. How long does The Liminal last? Well, how long does it take you to let go of your “I know” mind? How long are you going to Google answers? I want to be clear that change happens at different scales. When I got divorced, when my father died, times I fell flat—I did understand where I was and I knew not to avoid grieving. I knew I needed to bring it on.
Number three is Metabolization, when the change is wrought in the body and we begin to feel that spark. It means maybe a new behavior, a new idea or things that surprise us or seem ridiculous or we feel giddy about. I recognize it as a sign that the change has happened and now we need to bring it into form. Metabolization is the playful stage. People are so glad to be out of The Liminal, and we start to feel excited about life again. But the worst thing we can do is grab onto the first thing that comes. Think about the rebound relationship, for example.
Then number four is Manifestation. Often you don’t even notice because the fit is so perfect, and what I mean by fit is the new form—maybe a job, car, house, person—is so good with that internal shift that you’re able to express your being in a whole new way, and that is so energizing.
Have you taught these concepts?
I did teach it to a small group to test it, like a pilot to see if it made sense and if I could explain it, or if it was just my internal weirdness. That was back in 2017, and what was cool was that the people in that workshop were applying the model to completely different changes like climate change, a dying father, a business transformation. They were bringing every single kind of change, which is exactly my point. The change process doesn’t care what it is. That workshop gave me the sense that I could help people.
Without giving away the farm, is there some big takeaway?
What is the big takeaway? Change is happening. It’s got its own process and we’ve forgotten that. This book is about bringing it back to conscious awareness. It’s perfect for the “I know” mind. We can begin to see a pattern we can get more comfortable with, and we’re not in any one stage at any one time—we’re in all of them. We’re dealing with an election, you’ve got a situation at work, I don’t know what’s happening with anyone’s home life, but it’s all at once. If we can see that process happening, where we are with each of those? It helps.
Thresholds of change author talk with Rebecca Borland Reynolds: Loma Colorado Library in Rio Rancho, Jan. 11, 10 a.m. Reynolds will present her unique and timely approach to how we think about change based on 30 years of experience bringing about change across disciplines and sectors.
