Healing the Matriarch

As I sit looking out the living room window I see a constantly changing landscape. The sun shines, but also the wind is picking up, moving the tall trees in the nature reserve behind our home. Heavy clouds are forming ready for the possibility of an afternoon storm. This is the nature of the transition from one season to another.

Looking at our world, its constantly changing. No two days alike. No two interactions with others exactly the same. Even during the course of each day your own moods, behaviour and actions vary. As you reflect on your life it’s possible to see moments that were ripe for change. Forks in the road and sliding door moments of decision making. There may have been even longer, more mellow periods of uncertainty and disconnection that stir your motivation and inspire action.

I’m using five of my previous blog posts to frame the journey of change. With a few strategies and insights to ponder. There are links to the full blogs should you wish to read further. Just click on the headings below: –

Nurture the Seeds of Intention

The beginning of a new year, seasonal change or a specific life event can be a catalyst to reflect on where you are in life. You might experience a growing realization that you are not living life the way you want to. There’s a general feeling of discontent.

Intention is the mental state where you make a commitment to a goal and plan. It may look quite different to where you are right now. A different place to live, a new career goal or developing a business idea. You may desire to be healthier and more active. Maybe it’s a loving relationship you are after.

The key is to take small, realistic steps on a regular basis. Keep visual reminders of your intention. This may take the form of a calendar where you write actionable steps you wish to take. Use vision boards, images and affirmations that reflect the ‘future you’. Celebrate progress you make along the way.

‘Patience without action leads to a passive life. Patience with perseverance leads to us fulfilling our goals’

Garcia & Miralles (The Ikagai Journey)

Embrace Change in Your Life

When you are experiencing change it can be exciting and unnerving all at the same time. Its not unusual to want to stay within a comfort zone of what you are used to and resist the process. As you make changes it is natural to have feelings of remorse and panic about the decisions you’ve made. This can happen particularly if what you have imagined looks quite different in reality.

Be kind to yourself. Give yourself ample time to reflect on decisions you’ve made and where life is taking you. If things feel a bit overwhelming as you embark on change, give it a framework. It may be appropriate to begin with an end date to work toward with your project, dream or vision. Then work backwards to the current time to imagine realistic steps you can take to help you move forward. Use them as a guide and if it takes longer than anticipated just focus on the next step you want to take.

View Change as a Journey

The hardest work is in coming to a decision to change something about your life. Once you have set an intention and are ready to embrace change, you can take actionable steps. In this blog I introduce a gentle process to guide the way. It’s based on the work of Stephen Cope ‘The Great Work of Your Life – A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling’.

In his book he describes a balanced approach of mentally asking for guidance and waiting to see what emerges. Usually if a change seems intuitively right it has a sense of ease about it. Wait to feel this and look for natural choices presenting themselves. Talk to others, particularly those who would be affected by changes you are making.

During the process continue to pause and reflect. Then have courage to move forward methodically. One gem of advice he gives is to let go of the outcome of your change. The ‘destination’ you think you are headed for may be replaced by something much better and more suited to what you really need from life.

Emerge with Your own Uniqueness

No two journeys of change are the same. Continuously gather knowledge and gravitate to books, courses and communities that really speak to you. What I personally found was once I started to explore what interested me it had a domino effect. Each new piece of information deepening my understanding and healing.

The process became one of transformation. Yet it wasn’t a ‘cookie cutter’ experience where I knew the destination of my change. It all evolved uniquely along the way. Some of the courses and information I was drawn to were interesting and helpful. Yet what initially attracted me to them quite often resulted in gaining different outcomes from others.

Allow the experiences and knowledge to fit you perfectly. Nothing is lost in what you discover along the way.

Know you are made to adapt

It’s part of our make-up to be continually changing and adapting to life. How you respond to change is reflected in your perspective. It’s possible to ‘reframe’ how you view negative experiences from the past. Often with hindsight you can see a wider picture of what’s occurred and have more understanding of a situation.

You can also consciously shift your perspective to be more optimistic. As psychologist Dr Rick Hanson describes – ‘Taking in the Good’ by really noticing and savouring the positive aspects of what is present in your life. This helps you build gratitude and also the ability to develop a balanced view, aware of the troubling things that happen and also the wonderful things that are part of your experience.

Change is an inevitable part of life. It requires setting an intention to take a different path, courage to action the steps required and periods of reflection and gratitude along the way. You are taking a unique journey in life. Know that you can develop the inner and outer resources to help you make decisions and support you along the way.

There is so much happening in our world today. Making our individual and collective experience feel less predictable and certain. In reality, we have little control over what happens in our lives.

I’m fascinated by change yet I’m not an expert on change management. I like to observe it in nature with the evolving seasons and in people as they transition through life stages. It’s present in organizations, world events and world history. To me, the only real constant in life seems to be change. Whether we resist, adapt or embrace it.

What might be some of the factors beneath our resistance to change?

We hold onto our memories tightly –

Often reminiscing about ‘the good old days’ and making comparisons with our current life experience.

An example might be our fondness to recall earlier stages in our children’s lives. To want them to stay small and dependent on us. It gives us an important sense of identity and purpose as parents.

Despite that our children grow up before our very eyes. Asserting their own opinions and preferences. As we notice these subtle changes in them it becomes important to allow our parent: child relationship to evolve. To look at the bigger picture that our role is to slowly let go and increase their independence and self-reliance.

It’s important to view our memories for what they are. Platforms to our imagination and to invite in the new. Our memories can be incorporated into our current priorities and frame future plans.

We live within our comfort zone –

We are creatures of habit adverse to change and conflict with others. Having certainty around our routines is comforting, yet we also carry an awareness that the next moment could completely upend our lives. Change forces us to reassess our behaviours and interactions with others.

Our personality and experience influence our comfort level with change. The openness to change versus resistance to it varies between people. The pace we are comfortable with also differs.

Expressing a need for change is difficult when we feel unsupported. We are social animals where the need for belonging in group dynamics is strong. We value our relationships and fear rejection and potential loneliness.

Change challenges the status quo-

Sudden change flips us into the reactive ‘red’ zone where our mind and emotions race and we can become upset, sad, angry, frustrated or defensive. It’s messy and unsettling as we try and navigate our thoughts, emotions and behaviours. We make decisions about how to express the desire for change with others and whether we have the courage to proceed. Part of this mental gymnastics means entertaining the possibility of being disliked in the process.

Moving forward is often fraught with alternate possibilities. It can overload us with contradictory information and we fight to seek clarity about how to respond. It often appears easier to stay comfortable and avoid ‘rocking the boat’. Yet opportunities are lost to promote positive change in the form of equity and being a voice for ourselves and others. Persistence is also required to continue to move forward.

‘Changing the game, to me, means following your path, staying true to yourself, and never giving up’.

Susie Wolff. (Promoting opportunities for women in Motorsport).

Change shifts our identity-

Grief is a prime example of this struggle. When loss occurs we are left to work out who we are and how we should meaningfully navigate forward. There is a yearning for the life prior to the loss and learning how to live a meaningful existence going forward. We feel ‘lost’ after a loss. Dealing with the strength and unexpectedness of our emotions and the upheaval of even our small expectations of daily life.

The loss may be the death of a person or pet. The loss of a relationship or a physical loss such as possessions we value. We can also grieve losses within ourselves: – health, mobility and youth. Regardless of how the loss occurs it is often unexpected or difficult to accept. It plays with our sense of secure attachment and certainty. What was there is now gone. What we are left with is our ongoing emotional quest to establish a new identity beyond our sense of loss.

It takes courage to re-enter the world. We need social support, helpful strategies and persistence to slowly venture out and be a new version of ourselves. To move through the discomfort rather than avoid the process of adapting to change.

‘Bringing in a fulfilling life alongside the painfulness of that experience of grief’

Forrest Hanson

What is your relationship to change? Is it something that challenges you and you resist? Are you someone who adapts relatively easily to changes that are brought about by situations outside your control? Alternatively you may be a person who embraces change, happy to stay in the moment and not hold tight to how things should be. Invested in living life with acceptance rather than yearning. Perhaps you are a combination of all three depending on the scenario. Regardless, change is a part of life and how we navigate it teaches us so much about ourselves and the world around us.