Big change is like leaping off a cliff in the dark. There is no way you can know how or where you are going to land because it is uncharted territory.
If it’s so damn scary, why do we leap?
We leap because we have had enough. We leap because we suddenly see our habitual behaviors have somehow shifted from being useful to being some sort of life-suffocating insulation that no longer serves us.
In partnerships there is a lot of talk about unspoken agreements. As we grow up, we make unspoken agreements with ourselves. These are the things that we do like automatons in times of stress. The mindless eating. Drug use. Obsessions with celebrities. Spending all our time on social media. There are so many ways to escape looking closely at the strange, strange things we do.
Why do we need the push of pain, the awkward motivation of discomfort?Why does change feel so bumpy, uncomfortable and confusing? Why the hell can’t we just skip it? Because we have had enough.
Emotional pain teaches us when we have had enough.
Change is the responsible reaction to that pain.
Just like many marriages go through periods of renegotiation when one partner wants to switch careers, go back to school, or move to a new city, this is us renegotiating our relationship with ourselves. We are renegotiating all the unconscious decisions we have made over our entire lives.
It’s all there- The why did that happen to me, the why did I do/ choose that, the what if I had done something differently, the whys and what ifs and the tears and fears.
And then comes the take-a-deep-long-look-at-exactly-where-you-are-at part. This can be literally nauseating. For some, their physicality has taken the brunt of eating for numbness. For some, their minds are an internal landscape of anxiety and overthinking. Then there is the soft dark place of depression, and of course the ever-popular distraction that myriad forms of media offer, usually leaving us with skewed ideas of what is important in life.
We have to know where we are starting from to figure out where we want to go. I was creative and had a mixture of issues. I was depressed, ate too much to avoid facing that my then-relationship was not working, and had a stringent perfectionist giving me orders in my mind.
Then I had enough.
I left it all, the person, the home, the town, the community, my jobs, the landscape. I jumped off the cliff. I was so terrified, my entire being, physical, emotional, and mental was second-guessing, bargaining, and just plain freaking out about how to stay safe.
I kept telling myself over and over again, “You have to be able to grow. This will all be worth it. You have to be able to grow.”
For the first time, I was consciously choosing my path, and I was choosing growth over safety.
I was right. That was over 20 years ago, and over time, with help, patience, and a lot of humility, I found out where my safe place was: inside of me, and I found out that true freedom, for me, is about integrity and joyful self-responsibility.
I would love to help you find out what is true for you.