Grow With Soul: Episode 128 - Making Change - Change You Want and Change You Don't
Welcome back to Grow With Soul, and this first episode of 2022. Thank you so much for coming back and listening in and supporting the show. Today I wanted to talk about something that is as fitting in January as it is any other month: change. The only thing we can guarantee is change. Sometimes it happens fast, sometimes it is glacial; sometimes it is good, sometimes it is bad, and sometimes it feels bad but is actually good. Sometimes it’s within our control, and other times it is thrust upon us with no say. But however it happens, it happens. So today I’m talking about dealing with the change you want, and the change you don’t.
What I talk about in this episode:
Going easy in change that you want
Grieving the paths not taken
Not swimming against the tide of change
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Read The Episode Transcript:
Welcome back to Grow With Soul, and this first episode of 2022. Thank you so much for coming back and listening in and supporting the show. Today I wanted to talk about something that is as fitting in January as it is any other month: change. The only thing we can guarantee is change. Sometimes it happens fast, sometimes it is glacial; sometimes it is good, sometimes it is bad, and sometimes it feels bad but is actually good. Sometimes it’s within our control, and other times it is thrust upon us with no say. But however it happens, it happens. So today I’m talking about dealing with the change you want, and the change you don’t.
Change You Want
Perhaps the change is a comparatively big one: a long awaited move is finally happening, a new job, becoming self-employed. Perhaps it is comparatively small: starting up a new project, getting to the yoga mat every day, taking a course. It doesn’t matter the size, it’s a change (I would go so far as to say that the smaller ones are the ones to watch - with a big project, we are braced and expectant of the ride, but with small ones we deem not to “count” we can find ourselves suddenly tipping over the top of the rollercoaster without realising we were on the ride). Even though this is a change you want, one you have initiated, one you’re excited by - by anyone’s measure a “good” change” - there still comes upheaval.
So much of your energy, time and attention is being eaten up by the change because that is where you want to put those things. You don’t want to be thinking about what to make for dinner or spending hours on housework or thinking about that problem of your friend’s when you're CHANGING YOUR LIFE. You may be looking at things and people you can jettison from your life so you can focus more on your project, or you may be a little worried that some things are getting pushed out but not worried enough to split the attention.
By the summer of 2017 I was nothing but this business. I didn’t officially leave my job and start it until July, but in the previous three months I was all but checked out: listening to business podcasts all day at my desk, escaping at lunchtimes to binge on thinking about it. After moving, there was a good year where all I did was walk the dog and have a business. I didn’t put energy, time or attention into making new friends or nurturing old ones, into exploring my new area or into my own humanity. The business felt like enough, more than enough: it was limitless opportunity until it became a glass box I was trapped within.
All this to say, like a boring old crone, go easy. In excitement you can’t always trust your brain. Your brain wants the shiny thing, the thing you’re excited by. It wants the dopamine from achievement which, when you’re starting something new, comes thick and fast because progress can be made constantly. But what you want isn’t always what you need - you are not a robot, you are a human.
You need connection, because we are social animals and when the loneliness hits you like a sledgehammer in the middle of what you’re building you’re going to want and need your village. You need rest, because otherwise you will burnout and you will get ill and you will feel overwhelmed, and the ideas will dry up, and you’ll think you’ve lost it ,which will make all those things even worse. You need time and space to be something other than the person starting a business or writing a book or doing yoga every day because otherwise you back yourself into corner you can’t find your way out of. Don’t overexert yourself towards something because when you get there you may find you have nothing else, and nothing else of what matters.
Most of the time our bodies and minds don’t know the difference between good and bad change, they just know it feels uncomfortable and that we are out of our safe comfort zone. And so, they react accordingly, sending us the messages to retreat, that it’s not going to work, to get out of there.
Over the last three years I have found myself continually at the edge of discontinuing 121 work, and continually retreating away from it. I’ve been there with bona fide replacement offerings that I shuttered without giving half a chance because it was just so uncomfortable. Your big move might be out on ice after putting the house on the market because oh god it’s really quite scary and are you quite sure? Your new relationship might be cut, because what could be more out of one’s comfort zone than falling in love?
A few weeks ago Amie McNee posted on Instagram that “so many creatives quit before it gets easy”. Because it does get easy, all of those things. Once your body and brain have assimilated, they no longer scream “unsafe! unsafe!” at you. After you’ve done something a few times, you become competent at it, which makes you feel confident. Your new house becomes your home, your new love your support system. It gets easy, you just have to white knuckle the hard.
One thing we are wholly unprepared for with good change is grief. I wrote about this to someone last year, and I will share that here. When we choose a path there is grief for the ones not chosen. We know this, instinctively, which is why we dilly dally over decision-making because we’re trying to figure out a way to avoid that grief, to have our joyful clarity and eat it too. We do this whole gymnastics routine of back bends and leaps, running around the problem with our flying ribbon to try to figure out a way in which we only feel great about the solution. This knowing doesn’t quite reach the surface of our consciousness though, so when, inevitably, we feel sad about the paths not chosen we think this is an indictment of the path we are on - that it’s the wrong path, we messed up, we should be feeling nothing but joy joy joy.
In nature there is no light without shade, no give without take. The smooth face of a pebble, warmed by the sun, is grotty with mould and mud beneath the surface. It is both things. This is the natural order of things. In order for one tree to grow tall, the saplings in its shadow grow weedy and die off. When something expands, something else contracts - an equal and opposite reaction. To expect anything but this emotional push/pull is setting yourself up for incapacity to move forward.
What if we opened the door to this grief? Rather than have it sit at the window tapping on the glass loud enough to hear but quiet enough that you can’t locate it and think you’re going mad. What if we invited in the grief and allowed it to say it’s piece?
I do not wish to put words in your grief’s mouth (perhaps if you are of the journaling persuasion you may want to write on this, or if not hold the conversation in your head). But here is what my grief may say to me: there was a time that that was the dream and it’s sad that you didn’t get that and you must feel very disappointed because it was all there for you, was everything you’d been working towards since you were 8 years old and now the door is closed on it and although it’s good it’s also sad. Things can be good and sad, but they don’t need to permanently be good and sad - that’s when we get to a life of “what if”s and “if only”s. Experience the sad, do the mourning for the paths you didn’t choose, for the lives that were possible. And then, you can smile and turn to the little bundle you did choose and say “come on, let’s do this”.
Let’s talk about a few of the types of change you don’t want.
One is when it’s too soon or not how you wanted it to go; a change you wanted but not right now and not like this. I was speaking to someone the other day who runs a hospitality business and who wants to sell before the end of the year in order to facilitate a move. However, due to Covid and staffing issues, she was having problems with its profitability right now, and that was causing her a huge amount of stress.
In this scenario, it’s easy to become consumed by the overwhelm and specificity of the problem at hand, and lose track of the bigger picture. This to me feels like agonising over sourcing and fixing a widget in a car you’re going to scrap anyway. It is horrid when something feels out of your control, when your hand is being forced - you want to drag it back to how you want it to go. But step back and see the bigger picture - perhaps this is helping you towards what you want. Don’t lose sight of that larger vision; don’t be so preoccupied with the navigation settings that you forget to change course. When something like this is happening, when you feel out of control, how can you feel back in control at a higher level? You may not be in control in the moment, but in terms of your life, you can be. How can you turn it into an opportunity to get what you really want?
Another type of change is one that is against your will or you have no choice.
This might be having a partner suddenly leave you, a loss of market for your business. For me, at the beginning, selling my house was one of these. I spoke to solicitors and did sums and searched and searched for any way I could keep it on my own, desperately keeping the option to sell off the table… until it became the only option. That’s why it took eight months to go on the market - because it was a change I didn’t want to make.
Dealing with this kind of change depends where you are in the process because if you are in the throes of grief then trying to get perspective is just going to make it all harder. I didn’t want perspective, I wanted believe it would all work out. Allow the feelings to flow through, don’t reach to make lasting decisions when you’re in turmoil; if you are seeking a feeling of control, regain it from small decisions you can be confident on, like choosing a new book, a dinner plan, a walking schedule.
After that, the only way is acceptance and curiosity. Accepting that it’s happening and that you will get out of the mess faster and with more of your energy if you don’t swim against the tide. And getting curious about what the silver linings might be, what opportunities might arise. I was able to find acceptance and eventually peace in the change because it meant that my income requirements would be lower and I’d have less responsibility to an old building and more of my resources to spend on myself.
When you feel you’ve let yourself down because you’re choosing a change you don’t want to make.
The example I’m thinking of here are the new year intentions and plans you really wanted to do and yet they seem to be faltering and breaking down, and while you know it’s probably for a reason, it still doesn’t feel great.
Someone told me that January 21st is when resolutions start to slip. Do you really want it enough to do it? Is it really, in the cold light of January, what you actually want? There can be shame in this, a “what’s wrong with me” and “why can’t I follow through” spiral of thinking. But often I think if you’re not following through it’s because something’s not right, or because those intentions have served their purpose. It’s rare that my late December plans make it to February - most often it’s what I’d planned to do and offer through the business, but also my read/write/exercise every day resolutions crumble. But rather than change in a bad way, I think they shape shift into more of what you need them be; they got you started, but they can’t take you to the finish. You can pick up a new baton, and start again.