What have you deconstructed lately? When it comes to your beliefs or opinions, deconstruction is challenging but very important for continually improving the quality of your life, relationships, and general ability to live in the world. Deconstruction is the beginning of an emotionally unsettling process and hard work.

Why deconstruct? Though there may be a few minor adjustments along the way, you constructed the bulk of your unique perspective on the world during your late teens and twenties. You need such a worldview to help you live meaningfully in the world, make sense of it, and define your place in it. You adopted much of your worldview because an authority figure “said it was so,” and it remains largely unexamined. There is no other way of seeing the world exactly like yours.

Inevitably, your worldview will 1) meet head-on with contrasting new experiences, new information, ideas and worldviews of others, challenging conversations, dialog, and general interaction in the context of a diverse world; 2) fail to sufficiently help you make sense of occurrences in your life; or 3) fail to serve you well for living and relating. It can be disorienting, confusing, and uncomfortable to discover that there are other “right” ideas, other versions of the truth, and other ways of viewing the world than what you believed was right and the truth. In my world, we describe this “shaking up” as disequilibrium or disorientation, and the “shake up” sets the stage for learning. Your discomfort will prompt you to critically examine how you currently see the world, how it works, and your place in the world.

Deconstruction is not just demolition and is only the beginning of a transformative process*. In the process, you’ll consider and try out other possibilities that may work better for living and relating, reconstruct (go back to where you were), or remodel to adjust your worldview. Finally, it’s impossible to remain in a state of deconstruction and live healthily, so you’ll learn to live in a new, more effective, satisfying way.

And the process starts over as a part of continuous lifelong learning to live and relate.

All of this is emotionally unsettling. It’s disturbing because you must acknowledge the possibility that your current way of thinking is not as “right” and “true” as you once thought and may not be serving you well. Your confident commitment to these beliefs may be long-held and very evident, so the change will also be evident and emotionally challenging to acknowledge. Suppose you are determined to be inflexible (“set in your ways”). In that case, you are paving the way for even more dramatic, disturbing, and complex emotional experiences in the face of needed change.

Deconstruction involves critically analyzing what you currently believe (your reality) and considering other possibilities. Done effectively, this is hard work. It may call for changing from something familiar to a new, unfamiliar way which is always scary.

Deconstructing is an excellent thing, though it can be daunting. I know how this can be because I help people through the process all the time.

Are you feeling a little confused, disoriented, and need to deconstruct to discover better ways of living, relating, and understanding the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world around you? At True Course, we have a unique process for helping high-achieving, successful people like you to discover exceptional, growth-oriented ways of thinking. Your response to this process can position you to respond to the world around you in intelligent, flexible, and resilient ways.

Contact us today to learn more about the process and how you can engage it in your personal and professional life.