You’ve seen it, you’ve heard it -“Transformation”. The word is everywhere, splashed across LinkedIn profiles like confetti at a New Year’s party. Leadership transformation. Transformative Coaching. Your 7-step guide to personal transformation. The term is so overused, it’s lost its potency.

Transformation is not a buzz-word to add to your LinkedIn headline to make you look enlightened, or a trendy label for your course. And it’s certainly not interchangeable with “change” or “personal development”.

Change is incremental improvement, it’s linear. Changing our attitude will change certain actions – yet, this is not necessarily transformation, just as not all improvements are innovations.

Transformation, on the other hand, is a metamorphosis. It’s not about revising your past; it’s about annihilating it. A shift so seismic that your past no longer dictates your future. Unlike change, transformation doesn’t just tick off boxes – it redraws them entirely.

Change keeps you chained to who you’ve been – a perpetual reminder of your limitations and past failures; transformation unlocks who you could become based on your vision for the future. It’s not a few isolated initiatives to self-develop; it’s a synergistic portfolio of groundbreaking shifts that are unpredictable, experimental and a quantum leaps into uncertainty.

Think of a caterpillar. A mere “change” would make it a bigger, or perhaps a more colorful but would essentially still remain a caterpillar. But it transforms, emerging as a butterfly – unrecognizable from its former self. That’s the level of commitment transformation demands. Not just change, but a total reinvention.

This isn’t just about individual reshaping; it’s about societal evolution. Transformation is about envisioning a whole new realm of existence and daring to bring it into life. It catapults you into an alternate reality where you’re not just reacting to life but radically redefining it.

If you’re involved in global change, if you’re committed to overturning the status quo and creating a new world, then nothing less than full-blown transformation will suffice. Global change isn’t just a matter of policy shifts or new initiatives; it begins with personal transformation. No seismic societal evolution occurs without individuals first breaking free from their limitations and becoming agents of that change.

Your future self will thank you. Or better yet, your future self won’t even recognize today’s you.