He calls it “the subject-object shift” and argues that it’s the single most important move we can make to accelerate personal growth. For Kegan, our subjective selves are, quite simply, who we think we are. On the other hand, the “objects” are things we can look at, name, and talk about with some degree of objective distance. And when we can move from being subject to our identity to having some objective distance from it, we gain flexibility in how we respond to life and its challenges.
