In recent years I have come to really appreciate these two words: “chreode” and “entelechy”. Each word is made from Greek roots. “Chreode” -a very recent invention- was coined in the middle of the 20th century. The other word “entelechy” is also a bit new, but in a much older sense. In print, “entelechy” dates back to the year 1600. I love these words. They communicate ideas and experiences that are important to all humans.
Chreode is a neologism (meaning “new word”) created by CH Waddington (1905 to 1975), a British biologist and geneticist. It is made from the Greek roots chre, meaning “it is necessary”, and hodos, meaning “route or path”. Chreode can be defined as “the path of what should be”. Nature always seeks this path, as it is the most stable, requires the least amount of energy, and presents the least resistance to development along its path. It is the path of least resistance. Think of chreodes as grooves or channels; they allow our systems to run at the lowest power and highest efficiency, but they also trap us in paths of meaning and behavior that we may want to change, but simply lack the means or energy to get out of. If the groove is too deep, it is difficult to get out of it. “Almost there” doesn’t, because we slide down the sides, back to the bottom of this “road that should be.”
Entelechy is derived from the Greek roots of “have” and “perfection”. Aristotle uses the word to convey “the complete realization or expression of some function; the condition in which a potentiality has become a reality.” In various applied senses (apparently due to Aristotle’s misconceptions about meaning), entelechy is “that which gives perfection to anything; the informing spirit”.
We all seek our own version of the entelechy, the “realization of potentiality.” When we are successful, this is great! But when we do manage to manifest something, we can also get caught up in unwanted chreodes, the seemingly unrevisable pattern that continues to work long after the good effects of our desired manifestation go from positive to incredibly limiting, such as when the solution stays too long. weather. its usefulness and becomes a new, seemingly permanent problem. This is almost always a confusing development, because if it weren’t for the chronodic tendency of past solutions to keep screwing up present successes, we’d probably have far fewer present problems.
For those familiar with the transformational NLP toolbox, two main questions may arise: “What would you like?” what is our way to start the movement towards entelechy, and “What stops you?” When combined with proper physical calibration, “What’s stopping you?” it is our highest speed chreode plotter. The art of good change work is to create new outcomes and solutions that are not locked into future constraints. The good news is that all of this is fairly easy to learn and can be applied to ourselves and others alike.
