To enact change within a system, you must meet it where it’s at.
I mostly have humans in mind when thinking about this, but I’m sure this can be applied broadly across most systems.
This principle applies across many aspects within humans. The simplest example to understand is progressive overload in weightlifting, or gradually increasing the stress on body over time. You must meet the system where it’s at: too much weight and you are prone to injury, too little weight and the system won’t grow, too much weight and you won’t be able to do enough reps for proper hypertrophy growth. I could go on about the different margins you must stay within to meet the system where it’s at, but you get the point.
There exists a zone of development in which the system can integrate new information or stress because it’s close enough to current capabilities. This allows for integration rather than rejection or collapse.
Deliberate practice, the best training method for skill building, works the same way. It is mindful repetition on performance tasks just beyond the edge of one’s capabilities. The key here is “just beyond” because if it was “wayyyy beyond” change would not happen! The work would simply be too hard for the practitioner to effectively make strides in. You’re meeting the system where it’s at.
I first came across this principle in Joe Hudson’s work:
“When you are coaching somebody, you start with where they are. You don’t tell them what you think their agenda should be. You follow their agenda. I think business is the same way. You don’t ask people to be different”
“You meet people where they are. You meet people with the problems they think they have”
Both quotes illustrate the key point: don’t try to enact change that’s unfeasible for the system at its current state. If you do, overwhelm occurs. Systems seem to have a filtering mechanism that rejects things debasing them too far from equilibrium.
In Hudson’s work, attempting to mold someone into the “correct” emotional landscape is naive and ineffective. True change occurs in small steps, iteratively, just beyond the system’s current state.
If someone has trauma causing nervous system dysregulation and decides to do an intense meditation retreat to “solve” their trauma, it will likely destabilize them further. You need to meet the system where it’s at.
Another example is within communication of complex topics. You must meet listeners where they’re at. Using big words that point to concepts that require four years of studying biology fundamentals will not enact change. You need to match the listener’s current knowledge level.
The challenge is that it’s often difficult to measure where a system is at. While extreme meditation retreats destabilize some people, for others they create breakthrough experiences that incremental practice never would. The retreat is still meeting the system where it’s at, but sometimes this can only be known afterward.