In a prior post, we talked about the four stages the transformation journeys take.
- A Call – the process starts with the ending of an old reality.
- Wrestling – the separation from the old reality can feel like wandering in the wilderness.
- Receive – after the struggle, new life comes like a revelation
- Return – the final stage is where we live it out and make a new insight an everyday reality.
Hollywood has mastered this framework at a much deeper level and that is why characters in movies are people we connect with so deeply.
These transformation stages are seen in the Bible, also. Two of the clearest transformations are Saul becoming Paul in the New Testament and Jacob becoming Israel in the Old Testament.
Jacob Re-Named
Genesis 32 documents what happens to Jacob and how his transformation follows this four-fold path.
Before the exile of the Israelites in Egypt, Jacob was in exile in a far off land for cheating his brother out of his inheritance. God called him to return to his country and his people.
As Jacob set out, he was greatly afraid and troubled to face his older brother, Esau. Jacob sends out all his wealth and family ahead of him as a way to pacify Esau.
Late at night, alone and with no possessions, Jacob wrestles with another man until daybreak.
When the other man sees that Jacob won’t let up, he dislocates his hip. Unwilling to let him go, Jacob, ask’s for a blessing. He receives a new name, Israel, because he has “striven with God and with man and prevailed.” Israel knew it was God he wrestled with. He saw God face-to-face, yet was delivered.
As Isreal walked off, he was limping because of his hip injury. Not only did he have a new name, but he also walked in a new way. He walked with hope, trusting that things would go well with Essau because God had delivered him.
Examining Our Transitions
Reflecting on our life and career, we can see a number of these transition points. It may be graduating from college and entering the workforce. Or getting married and having kids. Or even making a carer change. When we examine them, we can see that they follow the four major stages of the transformation journey.
I went through an interesting transition in 2015. At the company I was with, I was one of two outside sales guys. The other guy got fired for poor performance and his territory was given to me. I was pumped to take all the big accounts; the attention and affirmation from the CEO were fun (for a while!)
This meant that I now covered the entire USA, and travel became very frequent. There was the added stress that comes from bigger deals and pressure of having sole responsibility to grow revenue.
But what killed me was the endless mountain administrative work. Getting the information into and using the company computer system was not my cup of tea, especially being on the road and logging in via ham radio signals.
It was overwhelming, and it sucked the life out of me. It felt like I was running up a steep sand dune that was impossible to summit. I just wasn’t good at it and I dreaded it.
One day I made a huge mistake processing an order for a large aerospace company. It was discovered in an audit and turned into a major and expensive headache. It is lucky that caught it before it became a catastrophic disaster.
That year I was in a leadership development program, and this issue kept coming up in coaching. To my coach, it was obvious I needed to stop all the administrative tasks and focus on what I was good at. But to me, it was unfeasible as I equated being busy with being important.
My coach challenged me to try stopping it for a week. It meant not replying to the emails that didn’t require my direct response, declining calendar events for production conference, not entering quotes or orders and archiving all the emails.
At first, it was brutal. I wanted to keep my hand in everything. I wondered if this was what cold turkey for a workaholic felt like.
The impact was dramatic. Others picked up the slack and did a much better job. While it only freed up a couple of hours a day, it gave me way more time as it wasn’t draining the life out of me. And being able to focus on the things I was good at, energized me even more.
Being able to focus on growing revenue, a crazy thing happened, revenue grew!
Looking back, I can see how this small shift had a big impact. But in the midst of it, I couldn’t tell that a transformation was happening.
Reframing Life Events
As humans, we are storytelling machines. We experience events and then we tell ourselves stories about them all day long.
We define ourselves, decide the actions we take and how we feel about situations and ourselves through the narrative we have about ourselves and our work, the things we do and the things we’ve done, or the things that have happened to us.
It may seem like we have a lot of these stories, but each of us has about three of four that have the biggest impact on us. When we take a look at these stories, write them down or tell it to someone, it changes the power it has over us.
Looking at the negative stories, the things we wished never happened to us, over time, you can start to see it from different angles. You can see good character traits it may have formed in you. It is possible to change the negative charge these stories have to either neutral or positive.
As a way to try this yourself, think of a pivotal moment in your life and try this exercise.
Rock – Resistance – Revelation – Road
- The Rock – What dream has been left in the rubble?
- The Resistance – Name the opponent you are wrestling with?
- The Revelation – What insight or support have you received?
- The Road – Who have you become, and how are you walking differently?
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Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:
The old has gone, the new is here!
2 Corinthians 5:17
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