Name the new problem your last solution has opened up
After you resolve a problem, write down the next one that the freed-up time or energy is now showing you.
Why it works
In Graves’s account, solving the problem a person faces at one level frees energy and creates new existential problems, so the next problem tends to appear once the old one is handled. This page reads restlessness after a resolved problem as a candidate for the next problem to name, not as proof that the resolution was wrong. That reading is this page’s own.
How to do it
- Pick a problem you have recently resolved or stopped carrying.
- Write down what has become easier or freer since then.
- Ask what that freed-up time, attention or energy is now pointing you toward.
- Write the answer as a question you could start working on this week.
Evidence
The statement is in the reprint’s unindented passage on how a person changes levels: the solution of the current problem frees energy and creates new existential problems. That passage is not among the indented, editor-marked passages. (anecdotal)
The link to restlessness is this page’s reading, not a finding Graves reports. No independent study of it was found.
Sources
Common mistake
Assuming the restlessness after a win means you are doing something wrong, and trying to fill the new space with more of the old activity.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Clare Graves’s Emergent, Cyclical Theory of Adult Development
- Notice when your conditions have changed and your usual fix stops working
Check whether the conditions of your life have shifted, and whether the way you have been coping still solves the problems in front of you.
- Tell apart having the capacity from having worked through your current problems
Separate knowing you could handle a bigger role from having solved the problems of the one you hold now, and notice whether the old fixes are already breaking down.
- Expect a dissonance phase and plan for it during a shift
Name which part of a change you are in, and plan support for the dip that usually comes before a new way of living settles in.
- Judge a sudden change by the problem it solves, not how it looks
Before calling a change in yourself or someone else a breakdown, ask what problem the new way of living is handling.
- Fit your response to the level someone is operating from
When someone does not respond to your approach, ask what they need from their current way of living before trying to change what they believe.
- Name the gap between what a role asks and what you can do now
List what your role expects, and mark honestly which expectations you can meet from where you stand today.
Related concepts
- Spiral Dynamics, Made Practical
Understanding how value systems develop and how to navigate across them
- Ego Development Theory: What It Is and How It Is Measured
The frame you make meaning through, how researchers measure it, and how to work with it without ranking anyone
- Terri O’Fallon’s STAGES Model, Made Practical
Twelve stages built from three repeating questions, and how to work with the one you are in
- Torbert’s Seven Action Logics of Leadership
Seven ways leaders make sense of pressure, how common each is, and how to work with your own
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
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