Finale, Episode 15: Heraclitus and the Flux of Belonging
- Georgina Brown (hershe)
- Sep 29
- 3 min read
Why “You Can’t Step Into the Same River Twice” Is the Ultimate Neuro-Inclusive Insight
Forget job titles. Forget diversity metrics.
Let’s time-travel.
To ancient Ephesus.
Around 500 BCE.
Where a solitary philosopher named Heraclitus paced riverbanks and whispered truths the modern workplace still hasn’t caught up with.
His most famous idea?
“You cannot step into the same river twice.”
Everything is in flux.
Nothing is static.
And identity, perception, even you, are always becoming.
It might sound poetic. But in the age of neuroscience, systems theory, and inclusion?
It’s also profoundly practical.
Because if brains are plastic…
And culture is dynamic…
And inclusion is never “done”
Then Heraclitus wasn’t just a philosopher.
He was an early architect of the Neuro-Inclusive Maturity Model (NIMM).
The Science Bit: The Brain Is the River
Heraclitus believed the world was made not of things, but of flows, of tension, movement, contradiction, and transformation.
Sound familiar?
Modern neuroscience agrees:
Brains don’t “store” reality. They constantly construct it, moment to moment.
Neural pathways change with experience, environment, and attention.
Identity isn’t fixed, it’s a process of ongoing prediction and revision.
Bias, emotion, memory? Not truths. Patterns.
The brain is the river.
Inclusion work, then, isn’t a dam, it’s learning to read the current.
To navigate ambiguity.
To stay responsive to what’s here now, not what was true last week.
“All is change, and we are changed.” – Heraclitus (paraphrased via the prefrontal cortex)
How Heraclitus Supports the NIMM
In the Neuro-Inclusive Maturity Model (NIMM), we hold five evolving domains, not as tick boxes, but as living practices:
Neuroscience-Informed – brains are plastic; learning is never complete
Mindset-Shifting – inclusion requires embracing impermanence and paradox
Trust-Building – trust is fluid, not guaranteed. It flows—or it doesn’t—based on how we show up
Bias-Disrupting – static thinking is the seedbed of bias; dynamic self-awareness disrupts it
System-Aware – systems are in flux too, responding to pressure, pattern, and possibility
Heraclitus gives us permission to stop seeking finality.
To stop announcing “culture change achieved.”
To accept that belonging is not a finish line, but a current we keep learning to navigate together.
Real Inclusion Requires Embracing Uncertainty
Let’s face it:
Organisations crave control.
They want certainty. Frameworks. A 5-year plan. A EDI dashboard that says we did it. Yay!
But the most meaningful inclusion work?
Lives in the uncertain.
The becoming.
The awkward moments between policies.
The conversations that surprise even you.
Heraclitus would say:
Good.
That’s exactly where growth happens.
So next time someone asks “what’s the final answer?”
Smile gently.
And quote the river.
Try This: A Flux Reflection Practice for Leaders and Teams
Ask your team:
“Where in our culture are we holding on too tightly to how things were?”
“What might change if we assumed nothing stays fixed, and that’s okay?”
Reflect on one place you’ve changed your mind in the last year.
Celebrate it.
That’s inclusion, in motion.
Want More Heraclitus? Start With the Fragments:
His surviving works are poetic, paradoxical, and often only a sentence long.
But each one is a doorway.
“Character is destiny.” (i.e. how you act becomes who you are)
“Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.”
“The way up and the way down are one and the same.”
These aren’t riddles. They’re instructions for living in complexity.
Just like inclusion.
Reflect:
What if every meeting, every emotion, every disagreement… Was just a different bend in the river?
What would change if we stopped fixing people, and started flowing with them?
What might emerge if we trusted that we, too, are changing all the time?
Final Thought: NIMM Is a River, Not a Roadmap
As we close this first series of “Gurus Who Get Neuroscience,” let’s be clear:
The Neuro-Inclusive Maturity Model isn’t a destination.
It’s a dynamic, developmental process.
It asks us to grow alongside our brains, our cultures, and each other.
To hold what’s hard without needing it to resolve.
To create safety for transformation—not conformity.
Because as Heraclitus (and every good neuroscientist) would tell you:
What matters isn’t what stays the same.
What matters is what evolves.
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