We all want big personal change at the push of a button – but here is how to actually achieve it

Real growth develops from the inside out. The process involves giving up the illusion of control and discovering the liberation and limits of your own agency

I

am emerging into the light after the first chapter of potty training our toddler. This involved not leaving the house for several days and gleefully shouting, “No more nappies!” as our daughter ran around bare-bummed and we began learning together how to get the poo and wee in the potty. I’m finding it a fascinating process – as well as messy, devastating and joyful. I learned a lot from reading Oh Crap! Potty Training, by Jamie Glowacki; one particular line hit me like the smell of new poo all over our cream carpet: “If you put pressure on the process, it will collapse.”

This is not only true of potty training. Sex, relationships, learning, play, recovery – these are processes that need to unfold in their own way and time, because under pressure they will warp, buckle and collapse. Understanding this is key to building a better life – but it is much easier to know this cognitively than it is to actually live it.

We might say, “No pressure”, but saying something does not make it so. We suffer from a profound and painful longing for things to be done right away – for there to be, instead of a process, a button to press that makes it happen. I wonder if it was this unconscious wish for immediacy that led humankind to develop machines and technology. Perhaps the inventors of the button in the late 19th century were driven by their frustration about the time it takes to grow and develop and learn and form relationships and raise children, and they created something that makes an instant change. You press a button and something happens – a light goes on or a sound comes out or an explosion goes off. This is seductive for so many of us; it gives the intoxicating illusion of control. Whenever we get home, as soon as my daughter sees the doorbell, she says: “I want to press button.” Like many other children and indeed adults, she enjoys pressing her mother’s buttons, too.