Think of it as akin to the earth’s gravitation field. Gravity kept us pinned to the earth for millions of years until we finally broke free and realised we could use its effect to propel use through the solar system and beyond. All the spacecraft that travel to the moon and planets use the gravity of heavenly bodies to “slingshot” themselves through space. We can do the same with Social Drag but first we have to understand how it works. So, on with the story…..

There you go, like so many of us, meandering along the highway of life. Suddenly, you realise you made a wrong turn, or probably more than one if you’re like the rest of us, and you don't quite recognise where you are. The panic begins to rise, you can feel it, like a steel band around your chest. A steel band that isn’t quite tight enough to stop you breathing completely and at the same time it won’t allow a deep full breath either.

You work to keep the panic carefully controlled during the day, but after dark the ghosts of family Christmases past begin to haunt you. Tormented, you wander through nightmare after nightmare mumbling to yourself "How did I get here? This is not me! This is not my house!" “Where did “My Life” go!

It takes as long as it takes but eventually you reach a milestone, a birthday or an anniversary or your first grey hair and you declare "This isn't where I wanted to be! I'm going to change my life!"

And that steel band gets just a little tighter as you remember being here before. Fitness plans come and gone. Career changes dreamt of. The odd cut-up credit card in the bottom drawer with a carefully worked out budget. Switching to a low cholesterol diet.

Nothing stuck, none of it. Oh, you’ve got a few more baubles, a few more “things”. A new TV, a different car, perhaps you live in a “better” part of town.

But the “feeling” is still the same. If anything, with each experience the panic has grown slightly. That steel band is just a little tighter every time.

So now, just like the rest of us at one time or another, you find yourself faced with the fundamental question, "Can people, me in particular, REALLY ever change?". That is almost always followed by, "If I do, will anyone notice?" and of course, "If they notice, will they support me or will they sabotage me?"

I have been diligently pursuing my own personal development for over twenty five years now. I’m the first to admit, the quality of my work during those years has at times been varied. I have been “lost in the wilderness” at times and you would be justified in asking whether I was truly on any path at all. From the outside it must have looked like some fantasy I was indulging myself in, a bit like that old film, Never Ending Story. There is a difference between personal growth as a good conversation piece and having the discipline to grow yourself deeply, after all.

Nonetheless, side tracks and dead ends aside, the fact remains that I have grown enormously. I have made progress intellectually, spiritually and in terms of my overall emotional flexibility and fluidity, particularly in the last ten years as I come to understand and work with ideas such as Social drag.

I say this is a fact because I notice the solid evidence that I am handling my day to day life with more ease and grace and not becoming angry at the world for every thwarted plan and inconvenience I meet. I have more energy and don't let myself get run down like I used to. I laugh every single day (well most days) and there are a whole range of facial expressions (mostly angry ones) that my face has forgotten how to do. People I haven't seen in years, upon meeting me now often tell me multiple times, "My God, you look GREAT! You look so happy! WOW!"

One day an acquaintance, I hadn’t seen for a while, who had been struggling with burnout and who is much more cynical about the world than I am told me that he didn't think people could change (as an explanation for his mental rut... “that's just the way I am, he said). It challenged his thinking when I told him I didn't agree.

"Well I’ve done it, I’ve changed." I said

"You haven’t, not really", he answered.

I was stunned. What did he mean, “not really?"

Welcome to the world of social drag.

Essentially, Social drag is the time lag between your changing (not just planning to) and the rest of the world giving up its mental picture of who you are based on who you have been (to them) in the past.

BIG, SCARY, PROBLEM. It’s true, and I see this being a major stress point in many, many relationships. When we establish relationships we do so with a whole set of implied agreements.

For example, over the years I have had a few women who actually wanted me to help them figure out how to make their husbands more successful so that they wouldn't have to take a bigger role in sharing the financial responsibility for the household. One even said this outright! The tacit agreement was that the man would be THE breadwinner she could work as an option, or treat her business dabblings as hobbies without the stress of "having to" make them financially viable.

And exactly the opposite has been true. As families grow up and move away from the home, the partner that has been the home make, usually the woman sees an opportunity to do some of the things she has always dreamed of.  A new career perhaps.  The breadwinner (the man) comes to me really messed up because this is not what he had “agreed” to.  He thought they would just retire and sit on the veranda watching the world go by.  He is looking for ways to keep her at home, fulfilling her part of the “agreement” to be the home maker for ever.

How often does a friendship get started on the basis of "I'm a mess and you are a good listener?" When the good listener finds that they need some emotional support, they might find that the relationship does not provide the mutual level of support and understanding they would have expected. The original "contract", just didn’t included that part .

Often, people find their way to me looking for help to negotiate the challenging process of making major life changes so I have had an opportunity to study this dynamic closely. When people embark on a new evolutionary path, the gap between the original relationship contracts with their family, friends and co-workers, (both the implied as well as stated agreements) for how the relationships will function can grow quite wide and it can happen very fast.

Many times I have had the primary breadwinner of the household, for example (male or female), say they did not believe they would truly be supported by the other family members in making a major life change, even when the individual was doing so for health reasons, let alone for their own growth, because the family did not want them to change their role. We are all interconnected and don’t always like it when people change. It is very difficult for one person to change in a fundamental, meaningful way without everyone else being affected.

When it looks like someone else's change is going to result in our having to have more responsibility in some area of family life, or in our own personal life, many, many of us resist. Take the example of the friends that I gave above. If I would rather whinge than do the hard work of changing the way my life works, I will want friends who indulge my whinging. If they change and stop enabling my behaviour it's going to make me uncomfortable. Misery loves company, of the miserable sort of course.

When people are invested in keeping you the way you are, Social Drag can come into play. If you remember the story about the crabs in the bucket, you’ll recall that just as one is about to climb out, the rest of the crabs pull them back down. Sometimes success threatens people simply because it threatens the status quo and the status quo feels stable and predictable.

I’ve heard some people say that social drag is mainly a nuisance. I think it is mainly a nuisance for individuals who are strong-willed and who never really bought in very strongly to how other people have felt about them or what popular opinion is. Some people are born mavericks and don't fear the social implications of continually reinventing themselves.

In my experience, these people are in the minority by a long way. For most people, their family, social and work cultures are so strong and their dreams and aspirations about changing their lives might be so ill-defined or represent such a profound change that most of the fruit just withers and dies on the vine.

Naysayers, critics, and those who suggest "you'll never change" (I call them dream stealers) can poison all serious efforts to do the work of changing one's life in a significant way. I know, without a doubt, that is why people keep turning up on my door step. When the social drag (or anticipated social drag) feels too strong for one person to overcome (think of it like the earth’s gravitational field), when that person can no longer allow themselves to continue living their life as it has always been lived, the right person can act as a sort of booster rocket to help that individual break the gravitational pull of the belief systems that threaten their dreams and aspirations.

One last point. Be responsible for your own dreams, and remember social drag is just as often an internal phenomenon as too. Sometimes our images of ourselves are just as slow to change.