A Bigger Life: Why Change Frightens Us

A Bigger Life: Why Change Frightens Us...Everyone knows the line: a goldfish grows two inches in a bowl, a foot in a lake. That's not the whole story. Goldfish never stop growing — the ones in the bowl stay small because of the size of the bowl but also a small volume of water fouls fast, and they're being slowly poisoned. The problem was never only the size of the bowl. It was also the quality of the water. That adjusment reframes a question most capable adults are quietly avoiding: not whether your environment has become too small, but what has gone bad inside it. Drawing on Robert Kegan on why sincere commitments lose to hidden ones, Herminia Ibarra on why you can't think your way into a new identity, Bruce Feiler on the collapse of the linear life, Albert Bandura on why confidence follows action, and Arthur Brooks on the hardest exit of all — the one from a bowl that is too small and/or the environment is not right.