Extracts

FIVE STEPS OF CHANGE

Whether it takes place gradually or suddenly, change is a rupture with the past. The present situation has to be abandoned in favour of an uncertain future. One vaguely recognises that the change will be irreversible; but at the same time one hangs on to the tattered remnants of the present, already endowed with the colours and savours of paradise lost. To change means to go into mourning for the reality which is disappearing in order to take up a new life, very similar and yet very different. Psychiatrists, psychologists and sociologists, who are familiar with the stages of the process of mourning, divide the process of alteration in to five stages. Without knowing it, we go through these stages in our personal lives, in our companies, in social life.