We have all experienced Deja vu at some point in our lives.  This happens when something brand new to us feels very familiar, like we have been here before.  The opposite of Déjà vu is Vuja de.  This experience is very familiar but feels entirely brand new. 

Our perceived familiarity being viewed as something new has the potential of allowing us to see something outside the norm for the first time.  In business ⁽¹⁾, this concept paves the way for delineating new areas for progress and profit.  On a personal level Vuja de has the potential to free us from a mundane sameness and catapult us into new and exciting areas of growth.  Ideally, Vuja de in action would allow us to change a less desirable familiarity into a more desirable newness.

“Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.”  - Stephen Jay Gould

Innovation

How do we arrive at innovation?  We would need to challenge familiar situations and see them through different eyes.  We would need to forgo accepting only the familiar.  We would need to interrupt the automatic continuation of situations that are not working.   

We know that mental stimulation and movement can be enough to sharpen the senses ⁽²⁾.  We know that by taking a walk, listening to alternative viewpoints, leaving our daily routine for a holiday, visualizing new ideas or concepts, and switching off for a few days may lead to a fresher Compos mentis, and potentially Vuja de.  The familiar has transitioned to become the new.

The ability to change one’s perception is a key avenue to innovation.  The black and white thinker has limited their potential growth by eliminating all the variables that create the grey.  A healthy debate with others or even within one’s self expands a comprehension of the possible.  The familiar is challenged when perception becomes more of a wide-angle lens.  Vuja de begins to germinate when our new ideas are given permission to thrive.

 “The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar... Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.” – Aldous Huxley

The Familiar

The familiar is comfortable.  However, growth is seldom comfortable.  We appear to need a certain amount of discomfort to grow.  The weightlifter must lift enough weight in order to cause muscle tissue to become damaged so that it may heal and become stronger. The runner piles on the miles enduring soreness the next day or two for the same reasons. Stress and discomfort enable gains in speed, strength, and endurance.

Mental and emotional gains are similar in terms of discomfort promoting growth. Mental and emotional challenges stretch one’s potential to overcome the obstacles of life. Although difficult, our achievements from our struggles will build self-confidence and self-efficacy ⁽³⁾.

To move away from the familiar requires a conscious effort.  One’s pre-existing assumptions and biases will need to be reconfigured in order to gain fresh insights.  Motivated reasoning will also need to be avoided.  This is the temptation to find the reasons you are looking for while avoiding the reasons you were not looking for.  This is the ultimate implicit bias.

Vuja de

Changing the familiar to the new requires imagination and resilience.  The ability to experience failure and persevere goes hand-in-hand with Vuja de.  As any elite athlete would know, success is only achieved through multiple failures.  But to move forward from the familiar there will have to be a resilience to the experiences of failure.  The best baseball players in the world still fail 70% of the time.

Imagination will serve the Vuja de journey well through exploring a myriad of possibilities.  When one possibility fails, imagination kicks in to find an alternative.  The beauty of imagination is that nobody sets the limits, except you.  You will always be able to imagine something new if you choose.

The saying ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ tells a story about the dangers of familiarity.  We need to break away from what is known to discover the unknown.  The earliest explorers were not just adventure seekers.  They were also trying to find something new to believe in.  The desire for the new is everywhere, even in the op shops we see the remnants of the familiar being traded in so we can discover the new.  Fashion is all about leaving the familiar behind and moving on to the latest.

“So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.” – Florence Nightingale

Vuja de is already all around us.  Opportunity is lying in wait for our imagination to ignite.  We only need to realize that we have the power to move from what is known, the familiar, to what could be.  To ignore these urges is to become stagnant and complacent.  Not unlike the rivers, we are mobile creatures and we look forward to the next bend, the next challenge and our growth.    

References

1-Grant, A. (2017).  Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World. Rarewaves, UK.

2-Baldi, S. (2017).  Vuja de: See Through Different Eyes.  Munich Business School.  February, 17, 2017.

3-Wilson, B. (2023).  Discomfort: A Pathway to Growth.  Psychology Today, July 15, 2023.