Purposeful Wanderings - Bradford L. Glass - October 2024
“You have to make mistakes to figure out who you aren’t.” – Anne Lamott
When I listen to others, which is a lot, I often hear about how difficult life and work are … a bunch of problems that all need to be “fixed” … now. Challenges are part of life; but there’s a difference between facing a challenge and life being a challenge. What interests me here is how we might come to experience life as a meaningful journey of our own creation, fueled by constructive ways to deal with its natural challenges.
The issue is that instead of learning early on about life as a journey with meaning, we more likely learned what keeps us from it – that “life is difficult.” This sets us up to perceive difficulty everywhere, because we’re taught to expect things to be “wrong.” The lesson is so ingrained in us that we don’t stop to question it, but just go along. The measure of life’s “meaning” is the win/loss column for the fighting. Perhaps worse, the fighting appears to work, despite the trail of stress it leaves behind. With years of practice, this becomes the way we see, and respond to, all of life … maybe even finding our identity in our success at winning this [self-created] rat race.
But in unconsciously approaching all of life this same way, we miss a few pieces of evidence that are always in front of our faces. These invisibles, not life, are what makes life difficult.
· “Trying harder” is a great approach if struggle is an issue of effort. But we’re not lazy! No matter how hard we “try,” doing the same on Tuesday that we did on Monday will never create a different Wednesday.
· “Trying harder” may work for cleaning a closet, but if we use it as a one-size-fits-all strategy for life, it denies our own inherent wisdom – and innate ability – to respond uniquely to life’s [unique] situations.
· And worst, by unconsciously relying on what we believe has worked in the past, we miss, and thereby deny, what might work better in the present. We become shut down to new possibility – just when we need it most.
It took me years to realize that my challenges (and my complaining, fighting and fixing) were not problems to be solved, but signals … life telling me that what used to work no longer did, and that I might instead grow into a new capacity/skill that would make life more meaningful and less stressful – at the same time.
Curiously, my first coach was inviting me at the same time: “Instead of getting things right, you might consider helping others get things right.” Hmmm. If only out of exhaustion from trying so damned hard, I listened. Life was telling me that by relying on just one skill, I’d missed the untapped potential inside me. (Perhaps life was also telling me to shut up and listen!) “Helping others get it right” has guided me for 25 years. That mindset also opened me to connecting more deeply with others, another “new way” then. The old message had a good run; or I thought it did, 30 [albeit rocky] years. It had worked … until it didn’t. Or, better said, until I noticed that it didn’t.
Underneath this (there’s always something significant below life’s surface chaos), the step I’d missed was the one step that could have made all the difference. It was a step of awareness alone – to gain internal clarity of just how my old thoughts were choosing my life for me (all the while, I thought I was doing it myself). When I learned to see the power these old lessons had over me, I could use my awareness to let them go.
With that clarity alone, I adopted a new way to face challenges: I no longer jump in to fix stuff. I stop … take a step back … listen, to myself, my environment … discover where my thoughts are leading me … feel the impact that’s having, on myself, on others … then decide, in that moment, which of my capacities might best serve me. (Often, “no thank you” is my best friend.) It takes only seconds, yet the impact is huge. Yes, it has taken practice. Yes, I still step in the lake now and then … reacting, when I might have been more graceful. Yet my practice of noticing all this has led me down fascinating back roads of the past, allowing me to release their programmed (ineffective) ways. The best: I found that always doing things the same way was the cause of my difficulty, not its solution.
Exercise: Lessons from my upbringing taught me I needed to get everything right. Not sure if I interpreted this as it was intended, but what I heard was that in order to be loved (or lovable) I had to be perfect. I got A’s in school; I tried hard; I was always busy; I feared mistakes. As a young adult, I achieved. What a nonsense lesson … but what a “perfect” recipe for learning to respond to life with a “fix it” mentality (also a perfect recipe for exhaustion and low self-trust … but the lessons were more powerful than the impact). I figured it was “just the way life is.”
Each of us is, and lives, a story. Above is a snippet of mine. I invite you to take a journey back to early beginnings in your life … a journey to discover (now) what created the “you” you became (then) … and how it has impacted your life, its choices, its struggles, its opportunities, its losses … not to fight it all, but to learn. In reconstructing your story – now as observer, not just participant, you see how lessons became ways of being; you see how ways of being served you (and how they didn’t); and you see where over-relying on your “go-to strategy” limited you from developing more effective capacities. It can be a fascinating journey, with big opportunity as its reward.
NOTE: You can’t “think” your way through this stuff; nor can you “make up” answers; you feel your way through it, with reflection, listening, practice and openness to new learning. (The easy way out may have its appeal, but “the easy way out leads back in.”) Use your quiet time for replay after replay of aspects of your life, “listening” to, and learning from, the messages that show up.
Life Lessons from Nature: Nature’s way of dealing with life’s inherent uncertainty is simple: uncertainty means opportunity … just keep creating. But … and herein lies the potential … she couples this with “listening” to how the creative process is going, so she can do mid-course corrections when needed. She listens for feedback, information flows inherent in every living system (ours, too!!) that lets the system know how things are going. This makes her creative process “context sensitive,” responding to conditions of the moment, in the moment, not one-size-fits-all. It sounds simple; why can’t we live like that? Oh yes, we can. If/as you learn to consciously trust your awareness … in this moment … to guide your next steps … in the next moment (rather than your unconscious, programmed ways), your reliance on one-strategy-fits-all fades, and you become resilient in the face of life’s challenges.
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Book of the month: The Book of Awakening, by Mark Nepo. 365 inspirations … one for each day of the year. Each is short, easy to absorb, actionable and insightful. Start with today’s date and read one each day for a year. Easy. I don’t often find myself recommending New York Times Bestsellers, but here’s one I connect with. And its subtitle, perhaps fitting for this month’s article: “Having the Life You Love by Being Present to the Life You Have.”
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