Is choice possible?

When I look back at my life I often ask myself: how much do I change and how much do I stay the same?

On quiet evenings the answer is: I do change tremendously and I do stay the same. I know my identity is constantly changing as a result of feedback, solicited or not, and yet my identity maintains overall stability.

When I focus on my developmental path as a leader I see the constant inner change I drive consciously. I can see my leadership model continuously under construction. And yet I am re-creating, maintaining and further developing an overall identity. Nothing is fixed, and yet all inner and outer development is influenced by the combination of mind and structure that precedes the new development.

Drawing by För Künkel

I believe, we are captive to our own internal mental and physical structure, and yet we are the constant co-creators of this very structure. There is utmost opportunity for free will to change, and at the same time there is utmost limitation: our mental and constitutional structures determine the range of possibilities for change.

The more rigidly we hold the structure of our identity, the fewer the choices available to us. We might be able to avoid or ignore crises, but we are less likely able to integrate disturbing experiences. The freedom to change ourselves as a result of experience and the integration of feedback is limited to a certain degree by our embodied memory – the historic structure of our identity limits the pathways we can take.

Yet the ability to see anew, to cognize in a different way, is always available to us and can induce different structural changes as a result of it.

I know, freedom exists and choice is possible. I can change myself by changing my thinking patterns, and yet I will never change the overall me.