Sharon Weil's Blog - Posts Tagged "changeability"
ChangeAbility: What Will You Do on Behalf of Love?
Originally published by LVBX Magazine.
It’s February, the month of Valentine’s Day, the month of love. Most of the time when we think of February 14 we think of hearts, and flowers, and sexy underwear. We think of romantic love. However, love arrives in many shapes and sizes, and even more forms of its expression. One way to express our love is in the willingness to change.
Whether that change is staying on a diet or new health regime, taking steps to start a new business or job, adapting to changes in a personal relationship, volunteering to advance a cause, or supporting others through change, beneath every action for change is the reason that answers the question, “Why am I making this change?” Why are you?
We all have needs for survival. The motivation towards securing food, water, shelter, belonging, and safety will always take precedence depending upon how hungry, thirsty or in danger you are. But, beyond the primacy of the urgent reasons for survival, the biggest reason I do what I do, and the reason you do what you do, is on behalf of love. Love of another, love of self, love of nature, love of country, love of beauty, love of spirit, love of words, love of food, love of body, love of the gift of life. Even if you’re fighting, you’re fighting on behalf of what you love.
It’s interesting to shift your perspective in this way. Rather than being motivated by the avoidance of pain or the severe consequence of not taking an action, when you recognize that what truly motivates you to make change or to meet change is to protect, preserve, or advance what you value and love, it opens up your world. You can experience much less resistance to the changes that come your way; there’s much less grumbling and complaining when the “have to” is in service to what you cherish. You may not want to change your eating habits to avoid a heart condition or diabetes; the foods you’ve come to love give you comfort. But if it means living longer with and for your family, you do it because of love. I may be avoiding tenting my house for termites because of the extreme hassle, but when I think about how much I love this house and want to preserve its integrity, my motivation overrides my opposition.
Compelling Reason
For the most part, humans are conservative creatures; we don’t make a change unless we have to. Even then, we usually first exert only the smallest, most convenient effort toward change. If that’s not enough, only then do we incrementally bring in more. In every action movie you’ve ever seen the hero attempts two or three plans that fail to thwart the bad guy until finally he or she brings out “the big guns.” Think about it. We get comfortable in our habits, in our social circles, and in our beliefs. We won’t make a change unless there’s a reason, and a good reason at that.
Even if the reason is “I have to,” the more difficult the change, the more compelling the reason must be in order to overcome the inertia or fear that would like to talk us out of it. Phrases whispered to self like, “this is too hard,” or “that chocolate cake sure looks good, what could it hurt this time?” can erode your resolve unless you have a compelling reason to stay the course. The more resistance you have to a change, the stronger your compelling reason must be. The voice of your compelling reason needs to speak even louder than the luring voice of chocolate. Most likely, that compelling reason is going to need to be renewed again and again as you meet the incremental challenges that can shake your faith and your goals when the course is just too difficult. The best way to renew your reason is to remember what and who you love above all else.
Being motivated on behalf of who or what you love is not always altruistic. People can be compelled to make change motivated by the love of power, the love of money, and by the covetous love of what you have and the desire to make it theirs. Still, their compelling desire is a strong indicator of what they value and are willing to work hard to achieve.
So many people I speak with believe that their change is motivated by fear. They’re going to save money each month from their paycheck because they’re afraid they won’t have enough for their child’s education. But fear doesn’t motivate us to action. Fear actually locks down action, biologically speaking, until some sort of surge propels you through the lockdown of fear into action. What I’m saying is that the surge that propels you actually comes from love, or care, or concern. It’s what activates a mother to enormous strength to be able to lift up an entire automobile that’s crushing her son, or it’s what compels the neighbor to run into a burning home to rescue the family dog. It wasn’t fear that surged the neighbor to enter the flaming building; his surge of concern shoved the fear completely to the side.
Think of a change you either need to make or want to. Why will you make this change? Can you reframe your reason for making this change to, “because I love…?” Does it make your reason more compelling or more interesting? What happens to any sense of anxiety or fear?
Courage
The word courage comes from the Latin root cor, which means heart. That’s where courage is centered, in the heart. Physical courage and moral courage animate a fire in the heart that compels action, even in the face of fear. We see it in Olympic athletes as well as religious martyrs. Courage is not the absence of fear, but taking action in spite of it. The great South African leader, Nelson Mandela, said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. A brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers fear.”
We all need courage to be brave in the face of fear and to take action in the face of change. Sometimes the courage is simply to face what the change is: the willingness to see the change and to accept it. Whether it’s changing schools, changing jobs, changing towns, changing mates, changing destructive habits, changing the way you view something, or changing the policies of the larger culture; they all require that you overcome your fears and act anyway. The most compelling and consistent reason for facing your fears and acting anyway is on behalf of who or what you love.
There are those who show their love through the courage of their convictions: people who will make personal sacrifices and face known danger in order to stand for what they believe to be right. We admire war heroes, emergency first responders, and people whose job it is to face danger in order to protect others; social movement leaders, new thinkers, and innovators who face tremendous opposition and risk; and so many others who knowingly have risked their lives and their way of life in order to expose the truth of what they know. Today, the Native American water protectors are fighting for the land and the values they hold dear; women and men are taking to the streets on behalf of women’s rights and the freedoms they cherish. What are you willing to fight for in the name of love?
Passion
Passion is the heat that can burn through fear. When you turn up the flame on an interest, we call that passion. Whether it comes from desire, urgency, lust, or zeal, passion is the spark that creates both the impulse and the fuel for the fire of change. Without it, we’d just sit on the couch and channel surf the TV.
Some people know their life’s passion from an early age. For others, what genuinely inspires their life eludes them. People truly suffer from not knowing what to do with their lives, or what would give their lives purpose, aliveness, or compelling reason. At times, the desire to pursue a particular passion, especially if it’s off beat or controversial, may carry too severe a risk or embarrassment, and so you’ll suppress your passion. Be aware, passions don’t like to be suppressed, and so the heat that drives the passion may show itself in other ways—sometimes in destructive behavior.
In locating your passion, it’s not just by asking the pressing question of what do you want to major in college, but asking how your life can serve you and others towards utilizing your greatest gifts, the ones that you value and love. Rather than asking, “What do I want to do?” why not ask, “Who or what do I love above all else?” And then of course, ask, “What am I willing to do to express and sustain that love?”
Moving your life more in the direction of your passion doesn’t have to happen all at once. You don’t have to quit your day job right away. Rather, find what you love and do a little bit towards it each day. Maybe just ten to twenty minutes each day. Start now. Eventually you’ll find yourself filling more and more of your time with what you love to do, led by the excitement and nourishment of the feeling of being with what enlivens you.
Dedication
Giving up your weekends to watch every one of your child’s soccer games, driving long distances and enduring long lines of impossible traffic to attend your favorite music festival, delivering meals to senior citizens, or working for less pay at a non-profit organization that furthers your values shows your resolve. Some might call it sacrifice; I like to call it dedication. One of the ways we show our love is through how we give our time. If you want to see what’s truly important to you, look at how and where you spend your time. It’s as simple as that. How and where we dedicate ourselves shapes our priorities. That means that some things might have to be put to the side in order to give our full attention to what we value more. Those things set aside could be your comfort, higher income, or personal play time, but your dedication to who or what you love will give you greater satisfaction and make up for what you might be missing in the moment.
People often have a greater ease in dedicating themselves to others than they do to themselves. They will literally do things for another person that they won’t do on their own behalf. You can make excuses why you’re not attending this sore throat or checking out this lump on your breast. But, if someone you loved—your child, your friend, or your spouse or partner—had a lump, you bet you’d be seeking medical attention, immediately. Can we love ourselves that much? Can we love ourselves as much as we love others in order to motivate and sustain the changes we need to make? How can you grow love, care, and concern for yourself so that you’ll take care of yourself as tenderly as you would your loved ones?
Refreshment
When making a difficult change you’ll need to refresh yourself, rekindle your fire, and renew your hope with something that gives you pleasure, something that you love. Watching sports, playing sports, walking in nature, dancing, laughing, cutting loose with friends: we all need to refresh in order to carry on with our dedication to change. For me, I get refreshed by art; for others, it’s cute animals; for yet others, it’s sexual play. All work and no play isn’t the best way to get the job done. Our periods of concentration need to be relieved by periods of pleasure so you can rest before you renew your purpose and your compelling reason. Refreshment allows you to bask in the sensation of what you enjoy. Being led by pleasure rather than the avoidance of pain is a radical act. Being renewed by pleasure helps us harness our dedication to stay the difficult course of change.
Change is a constant. Change is a given. But, your ChangeAbility—how and why you navigate these changes—is not a given, and not always easy. When you reframe your reason for change to be on behalf of who and what you love, your reason becomes more immediate and far more compelling. When you need to strengthen your reason, strengthen your love. Your compassionate concern or your passionate fire will carry you through the doubts, obstacles, and setbacks that are par for the course of any change journey.
So on this Valentine’s Day, in addition to the sumptuous chocolates, the red roses, or the seductive play you offer, make a small change, make a bold change, but make your change in the name of Love.
-----------------------------
Sharon Weil is the author of ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change (Archer/Rare Bird Books 2016), a book designed to help readers navigate all the changes of their lives, drawing upon the collective wisdom of twenty-five change-innovators across many fields. She is the author of the novel, Donny and Ursula Save the World, “the funniest book about love, sex, and GMO seeds you’ll ever read.” (Passing 4 Normal Press 2013) She is also the host of Passing 4 Normal Podcast, conversations about change, available on iTunes. sharonweilauthor.com
It’s February, the month of Valentine’s Day, the month of love. Most of the time when we think of February 14 we think of hearts, and flowers, and sexy underwear. We think of romantic love. However, love arrives in many shapes and sizes, and even more forms of its expression. One way to express our love is in the willingness to change.
Whether that change is staying on a diet or new health regime, taking steps to start a new business or job, adapting to changes in a personal relationship, volunteering to advance a cause, or supporting others through change, beneath every action for change is the reason that answers the question, “Why am I making this change?” Why are you?
We all have needs for survival. The motivation towards securing food, water, shelter, belonging, and safety will always take precedence depending upon how hungry, thirsty or in danger you are. But, beyond the primacy of the urgent reasons for survival, the biggest reason I do what I do, and the reason you do what you do, is on behalf of love. Love of another, love of self, love of nature, love of country, love of beauty, love of spirit, love of words, love of food, love of body, love of the gift of life. Even if you’re fighting, you’re fighting on behalf of what you love.
It’s interesting to shift your perspective in this way. Rather than being motivated by the avoidance of pain or the severe consequence of not taking an action, when you recognize that what truly motivates you to make change or to meet change is to protect, preserve, or advance what you value and love, it opens up your world. You can experience much less resistance to the changes that come your way; there’s much less grumbling and complaining when the “have to” is in service to what you cherish. You may not want to change your eating habits to avoid a heart condition or diabetes; the foods you’ve come to love give you comfort. But if it means living longer with and for your family, you do it because of love. I may be avoiding tenting my house for termites because of the extreme hassle, but when I think about how much I love this house and want to preserve its integrity, my motivation overrides my opposition.
Compelling Reason
For the most part, humans are conservative creatures; we don’t make a change unless we have to. Even then, we usually first exert only the smallest, most convenient effort toward change. If that’s not enough, only then do we incrementally bring in more. In every action movie you’ve ever seen the hero attempts two or three plans that fail to thwart the bad guy until finally he or she brings out “the big guns.” Think about it. We get comfortable in our habits, in our social circles, and in our beliefs. We won’t make a change unless there’s a reason, and a good reason at that.
Even if the reason is “I have to,” the more difficult the change, the more compelling the reason must be in order to overcome the inertia or fear that would like to talk us out of it. Phrases whispered to self like, “this is too hard,” or “that chocolate cake sure looks good, what could it hurt this time?” can erode your resolve unless you have a compelling reason to stay the course. The more resistance you have to a change, the stronger your compelling reason must be. The voice of your compelling reason needs to speak even louder than the luring voice of chocolate. Most likely, that compelling reason is going to need to be renewed again and again as you meet the incremental challenges that can shake your faith and your goals when the course is just too difficult. The best way to renew your reason is to remember what and who you love above all else.
Being motivated on behalf of who or what you love is not always altruistic. People can be compelled to make change motivated by the love of power, the love of money, and by the covetous love of what you have and the desire to make it theirs. Still, their compelling desire is a strong indicator of what they value and are willing to work hard to achieve.
So many people I speak with believe that their change is motivated by fear. They’re going to save money each month from their paycheck because they’re afraid they won’t have enough for their child’s education. But fear doesn’t motivate us to action. Fear actually locks down action, biologically speaking, until some sort of surge propels you through the lockdown of fear into action. What I’m saying is that the surge that propels you actually comes from love, or care, or concern. It’s what activates a mother to enormous strength to be able to lift up an entire automobile that’s crushing her son, or it’s what compels the neighbor to run into a burning home to rescue the family dog. It wasn’t fear that surged the neighbor to enter the flaming building; his surge of concern shoved the fear completely to the side.
Think of a change you either need to make or want to. Why will you make this change? Can you reframe your reason for making this change to, “because I love…?” Does it make your reason more compelling or more interesting? What happens to any sense of anxiety or fear?
Courage
The word courage comes from the Latin root cor, which means heart. That’s where courage is centered, in the heart. Physical courage and moral courage animate a fire in the heart that compels action, even in the face of fear. We see it in Olympic athletes as well as religious martyrs. Courage is not the absence of fear, but taking action in spite of it. The great South African leader, Nelson Mandela, said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. A brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers fear.”
We all need courage to be brave in the face of fear and to take action in the face of change. Sometimes the courage is simply to face what the change is: the willingness to see the change and to accept it. Whether it’s changing schools, changing jobs, changing towns, changing mates, changing destructive habits, changing the way you view something, or changing the policies of the larger culture; they all require that you overcome your fears and act anyway. The most compelling and consistent reason for facing your fears and acting anyway is on behalf of who or what you love.
There are those who show their love through the courage of their convictions: people who will make personal sacrifices and face known danger in order to stand for what they believe to be right. We admire war heroes, emergency first responders, and people whose job it is to face danger in order to protect others; social movement leaders, new thinkers, and innovators who face tremendous opposition and risk; and so many others who knowingly have risked their lives and their way of life in order to expose the truth of what they know. Today, the Native American water protectors are fighting for the land and the values they hold dear; women and men are taking to the streets on behalf of women’s rights and the freedoms they cherish. What are you willing to fight for in the name of love?
Passion
Passion is the heat that can burn through fear. When you turn up the flame on an interest, we call that passion. Whether it comes from desire, urgency, lust, or zeal, passion is the spark that creates both the impulse and the fuel for the fire of change. Without it, we’d just sit on the couch and channel surf the TV.
Some people know their life’s passion from an early age. For others, what genuinely inspires their life eludes them. People truly suffer from not knowing what to do with their lives, or what would give their lives purpose, aliveness, or compelling reason. At times, the desire to pursue a particular passion, especially if it’s off beat or controversial, may carry too severe a risk or embarrassment, and so you’ll suppress your passion. Be aware, passions don’t like to be suppressed, and so the heat that drives the passion may show itself in other ways—sometimes in destructive behavior.
In locating your passion, it’s not just by asking the pressing question of what do you want to major in college, but asking how your life can serve you and others towards utilizing your greatest gifts, the ones that you value and love. Rather than asking, “What do I want to do?” why not ask, “Who or what do I love above all else?” And then of course, ask, “What am I willing to do to express and sustain that love?”
Moving your life more in the direction of your passion doesn’t have to happen all at once. You don’t have to quit your day job right away. Rather, find what you love and do a little bit towards it each day. Maybe just ten to twenty minutes each day. Start now. Eventually you’ll find yourself filling more and more of your time with what you love to do, led by the excitement and nourishment of the feeling of being with what enlivens you.
Dedication
Giving up your weekends to watch every one of your child’s soccer games, driving long distances and enduring long lines of impossible traffic to attend your favorite music festival, delivering meals to senior citizens, or working for less pay at a non-profit organization that furthers your values shows your resolve. Some might call it sacrifice; I like to call it dedication. One of the ways we show our love is through how we give our time. If you want to see what’s truly important to you, look at how and where you spend your time. It’s as simple as that. How and where we dedicate ourselves shapes our priorities. That means that some things might have to be put to the side in order to give our full attention to what we value more. Those things set aside could be your comfort, higher income, or personal play time, but your dedication to who or what you love will give you greater satisfaction and make up for what you might be missing in the moment.
People often have a greater ease in dedicating themselves to others than they do to themselves. They will literally do things for another person that they won’t do on their own behalf. You can make excuses why you’re not attending this sore throat or checking out this lump on your breast. But, if someone you loved—your child, your friend, or your spouse or partner—had a lump, you bet you’d be seeking medical attention, immediately. Can we love ourselves that much? Can we love ourselves as much as we love others in order to motivate and sustain the changes we need to make? How can you grow love, care, and concern for yourself so that you’ll take care of yourself as tenderly as you would your loved ones?
Refreshment
When making a difficult change you’ll need to refresh yourself, rekindle your fire, and renew your hope with something that gives you pleasure, something that you love. Watching sports, playing sports, walking in nature, dancing, laughing, cutting loose with friends: we all need to refresh in order to carry on with our dedication to change. For me, I get refreshed by art; for others, it’s cute animals; for yet others, it’s sexual play. All work and no play isn’t the best way to get the job done. Our periods of concentration need to be relieved by periods of pleasure so you can rest before you renew your purpose and your compelling reason. Refreshment allows you to bask in the sensation of what you enjoy. Being led by pleasure rather than the avoidance of pain is a radical act. Being renewed by pleasure helps us harness our dedication to stay the difficult course of change.
Change is a constant. Change is a given. But, your ChangeAbility—how and why you navigate these changes—is not a given, and not always easy. When you reframe your reason for change to be on behalf of who and what you love, your reason becomes more immediate and far more compelling. When you need to strengthen your reason, strengthen your love. Your compassionate concern or your passionate fire will carry you through the doubts, obstacles, and setbacks that are par for the course of any change journey.
So on this Valentine’s Day, in addition to the sumptuous chocolates, the red roses, or the seductive play you offer, make a small change, make a bold change, but make your change in the name of Love.
-----------------------------
Sharon Weil is the author of ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change (Archer/Rare Bird Books 2016), a book designed to help readers navigate all the changes of their lives, drawing upon the collective wisdom of twenty-five change-innovators across many fields. She is the author of the novel, Donny and Ursula Save the World, “the funniest book about love, sex, and GMO seeds you’ll ever read.” (Passing 4 Normal Press 2013) She is also the host of Passing 4 Normal Podcast, conversations about change, available on iTunes. sharonweilauthor.com
ChangeAbility: Interesting Times
Published on LVBX Magazine
The Chinese proverb says, “May you live in interesting times.” I think we can all agree that indeed we are fulfilling that proverb. If you want to take the 3.0 advanced course in riding the turbulent waves of the movement of change, if you want to develop greater ChangeAbility as you hold on for the big ride, you don’t have to go any farther than your own backyard called the United States of America.
The results of the 2016 presidential election continue to surprise us with more twists and turns than an action thriller. We are a deeply divided country, and each of these twists brings cheers to some and dismay to others. We have never seen this kind of post-election upheaval, at least not in my lifetime. The voters are asking for change. We have change.
Change does not move in a straight line. You can often look back from any moment in time and trace the path of how you got here, but it is still rarely in a straight line. More often, change rocks back and forth. In politics we go from a Republican administration to a Democratic one, and back again, all in the name of being fed up with existing policy and wanting something new.
If you want to remain interested amidst this wild ride of an election but not burn your adrenal glands out from anger, fear, and grief, you need to improve your flexibility towards meeting change. I am not talking about “normalizing” what may be difficult to swallow, I am talking about recognizing the nature of how change itself moves. As the author of a book about navigating change, I have certainly been challenged to walk my talk. For me, the understanding that change always moves, always evolves, always rocks back and forth provides me with an essential overview perspective from which to navigate. I hope that embracing that understanding could be of help to you, as well. All change exists within a larger context, and the perspective that change rocks back and forth is its own context for meeting all the twists and turns of this election story, or your changing health story, or your changing relationship story—all the places in your life where you feel change affecting you most.
A context for change is the environment where your change is taking place, or where your change wants to take place. Contexts for change either expand or restrict your ability to change. The context provides you with the freedom and encouragement, or with the limitation and constriction on your own personal change. This is why people are so concerned with who is running the government, because our laws create the contexts for our personal freedoms and our abilities to work and thrive. That’s why people need contexts that nurture health and wellbeing when they are facing a health crisis or want to improve their health, or why people struggle in their relationships if the contexts of family or marriage are too tight and not flexible enough to allow for the personal changes of the individuals. Face it, some contexts are better than others for creating change, and all contexts will determine what is allowed and encouraged, or how hard one has to work to promote necessary change.
The emotions that accompany the rocking movement of change can also be their own expansive or restrictive context. The event of a change is one thing, how you feel about it is another, and how you respond based on that feeling is yet another, again. Anxiety or fear can cause you to constrict your movement, and to put up more resistance and build stronger barriers to what might threaten you. Those restrictions can limit the movement within the context in its attempt to guard against movement from outside the context. That’s the notion where people are willing to give up freedom in the name of safety, let’s say, during times of war. Joy and excitement can create a context of expansion where you might want to try new things and reach out into more hopeful risks. The best example of that is when you are in love. Passion can ignite you towards action, and anger can also ignite you towards action, but it can also consume you in its own fire and pull you off your intended course.
In animal response to perceived danger, our emotions are contexts that induce a response of fight or flight, or a response to get very still and hide as the biologically programed way to protect us, depending upon the kind of animal you are programed to be: a buck or a rabbit. Your particular response will depend upon the nature of the actual threat, the perceived threat, and your own habitual comfort levels with the movement of change. I speak of these emotional contexts and these responses in regards to politics because right now our government appears to be a volatile and changing context, and this rocking uncertainty gives some of us great fear while it gives others hope.
But these ideas about contexts and about emotional contexts also apply to a health situation where each day is different because healing does not move in a straight line. Those of you who have a daily or weekly exercise program know that each day does not feel the same; some days you are energized, and some days you are sore. Or when you are managing an illness, whether it’s cancer or a cold, there is progress and there are setback, and it’s best to accommodate each day as its own, because healing moves more like a spiral than it does like as straight line, and there are many aspects to wellbeing.
Relationships do not move in a straight line. The individuals within a partnership have moods, and preferences, and changing circumstances they bring in every day. Sometimes these individual changes are moving in the same direction at the same time, sometimes they are not. Each morning when you wake up, you need to be able to view your loved ones afresh, with curiosity, and if your commitment is strong, include the rocking and the shifting as part of the wave of being human.
When circumstances are shifting too much, when there is too much movement, especially unpredictable movement, we grow weary. We start to tune out. We want to go to bed and pull the covers up. If we perceive those shifts and changes as threatening, we fatigue from putting up so much resistance. Resistance is not only emotionally exhausting; it can also be physically exhausting. Imagine your body is a retaining wall pushing against a heavy mudslide that threatens to overtake your home. That’s a lot of effort. And if that mudslide keeps shifting its origin or front, your retaining wall needs to shift, too.
Developing skills to accommodate quick change requires that you have an overview that includes the back and forth as part of your expectation about the nature of life, whether it’s politics, or a changing health condition, or a relationship that moves and shifts. The book, ChangeAbility: How Artists, Activists and Awakeners presents Seven Principles for Change that are tools you can use to help you find more dexterity in meeting complex change. We need it now more than ever.
As we enter the holiday season, the season of Winter Solstice, of Christmas and Hanukah and Kwanza, it is the time of light in the darkest, longest night. The star in the sky in Bethlehem, the light of the lamp of the Maccabees, and the miracle of what light brings belongs to us all. After the December 21 solstice our planet moves again towards longer days and back into the light as we eventually cycle towards spring. My wish for you this holiday is that you find joy in rest. I hope that these holidays can be for you a pause between the breaths of action and effort where you can gather yourself, restore your energy and health, and be fed with food, family, and friends. Within every period of rocking back and forth there is a pause, if only for a moment, and I hope that you can find that pause and elongate it as much as you need. The gifts we can offer one another are the gifts of kindness and of deep listening. These times we live in promise to remain interesting for a long time to come. Rest so that you can meet them well. Find joy and celebration within your ChangeAbility.
----------------------------
Sharon Weil is the author of ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change (Archer/Rare Bird Books 2016), a book designed to help readers navigate all the changes of their lives, drawing upon the collective wisdom of twenty-five change-innovators across many fields. She is the author of the novel, Donny and Ursula Save the World, “the funniest book about love, sex, and GMO seeds you’ll ever read.” (Passing 4 Normal Press 2013) She is also the host of Passing 4 Normal Podcast, conversations about change, available on iTunes. sharonweilauthor.com
The Chinese proverb says, “May you live in interesting times.” I think we can all agree that indeed we are fulfilling that proverb. If you want to take the 3.0 advanced course in riding the turbulent waves of the movement of change, if you want to develop greater ChangeAbility as you hold on for the big ride, you don’t have to go any farther than your own backyard called the United States of America.
The results of the 2016 presidential election continue to surprise us with more twists and turns than an action thriller. We are a deeply divided country, and each of these twists brings cheers to some and dismay to others. We have never seen this kind of post-election upheaval, at least not in my lifetime. The voters are asking for change. We have change.
Change does not move in a straight line. You can often look back from any moment in time and trace the path of how you got here, but it is still rarely in a straight line. More often, change rocks back and forth. In politics we go from a Republican administration to a Democratic one, and back again, all in the name of being fed up with existing policy and wanting something new.
If you want to remain interested amidst this wild ride of an election but not burn your adrenal glands out from anger, fear, and grief, you need to improve your flexibility towards meeting change. I am not talking about “normalizing” what may be difficult to swallow, I am talking about recognizing the nature of how change itself moves. As the author of a book about navigating change, I have certainly been challenged to walk my talk. For me, the understanding that change always moves, always evolves, always rocks back and forth provides me with an essential overview perspective from which to navigate. I hope that embracing that understanding could be of help to you, as well. All change exists within a larger context, and the perspective that change rocks back and forth is its own context for meeting all the twists and turns of this election story, or your changing health story, or your changing relationship story—all the places in your life where you feel change affecting you most.
A context for change is the environment where your change is taking place, or where your change wants to take place. Contexts for change either expand or restrict your ability to change. The context provides you with the freedom and encouragement, or with the limitation and constriction on your own personal change. This is why people are so concerned with who is running the government, because our laws create the contexts for our personal freedoms and our abilities to work and thrive. That’s why people need contexts that nurture health and wellbeing when they are facing a health crisis or want to improve their health, or why people struggle in their relationships if the contexts of family or marriage are too tight and not flexible enough to allow for the personal changes of the individuals. Face it, some contexts are better than others for creating change, and all contexts will determine what is allowed and encouraged, or how hard one has to work to promote necessary change.
The emotions that accompany the rocking movement of change can also be their own expansive or restrictive context. The event of a change is one thing, how you feel about it is another, and how you respond based on that feeling is yet another, again. Anxiety or fear can cause you to constrict your movement, and to put up more resistance and build stronger barriers to what might threaten you. Those restrictions can limit the movement within the context in its attempt to guard against movement from outside the context. That’s the notion where people are willing to give up freedom in the name of safety, let’s say, during times of war. Joy and excitement can create a context of expansion where you might want to try new things and reach out into more hopeful risks. The best example of that is when you are in love. Passion can ignite you towards action, and anger can also ignite you towards action, but it can also consume you in its own fire and pull you off your intended course.
In animal response to perceived danger, our emotions are contexts that induce a response of fight or flight, or a response to get very still and hide as the biologically programed way to protect us, depending upon the kind of animal you are programed to be: a buck or a rabbit. Your particular response will depend upon the nature of the actual threat, the perceived threat, and your own habitual comfort levels with the movement of change. I speak of these emotional contexts and these responses in regards to politics because right now our government appears to be a volatile and changing context, and this rocking uncertainty gives some of us great fear while it gives others hope.
But these ideas about contexts and about emotional contexts also apply to a health situation where each day is different because healing does not move in a straight line. Those of you who have a daily or weekly exercise program know that each day does not feel the same; some days you are energized, and some days you are sore. Or when you are managing an illness, whether it’s cancer or a cold, there is progress and there are setback, and it’s best to accommodate each day as its own, because healing moves more like a spiral than it does like as straight line, and there are many aspects to wellbeing.
Relationships do not move in a straight line. The individuals within a partnership have moods, and preferences, and changing circumstances they bring in every day. Sometimes these individual changes are moving in the same direction at the same time, sometimes they are not. Each morning when you wake up, you need to be able to view your loved ones afresh, with curiosity, and if your commitment is strong, include the rocking and the shifting as part of the wave of being human.
When circumstances are shifting too much, when there is too much movement, especially unpredictable movement, we grow weary. We start to tune out. We want to go to bed and pull the covers up. If we perceive those shifts and changes as threatening, we fatigue from putting up so much resistance. Resistance is not only emotionally exhausting; it can also be physically exhausting. Imagine your body is a retaining wall pushing against a heavy mudslide that threatens to overtake your home. That’s a lot of effort. And if that mudslide keeps shifting its origin or front, your retaining wall needs to shift, too.
Developing skills to accommodate quick change requires that you have an overview that includes the back and forth as part of your expectation about the nature of life, whether it’s politics, or a changing health condition, or a relationship that moves and shifts. The book, ChangeAbility: How Artists, Activists and Awakeners presents Seven Principles for Change that are tools you can use to help you find more dexterity in meeting complex change. We need it now more than ever.
As we enter the holiday season, the season of Winter Solstice, of Christmas and Hanukah and Kwanza, it is the time of light in the darkest, longest night. The star in the sky in Bethlehem, the light of the lamp of the Maccabees, and the miracle of what light brings belongs to us all. After the December 21 solstice our planet moves again towards longer days and back into the light as we eventually cycle towards spring. My wish for you this holiday is that you find joy in rest. I hope that these holidays can be for you a pause between the breaths of action and effort where you can gather yourself, restore your energy and health, and be fed with food, family, and friends. Within every period of rocking back and forth there is a pause, if only for a moment, and I hope that you can find that pause and elongate it as much as you need. The gifts we can offer one another are the gifts of kindness and of deep listening. These times we live in promise to remain interesting for a long time to come. Rest so that you can meet them well. Find joy and celebration within your ChangeAbility.
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Sharon Weil is the author of ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change (Archer/Rare Bird Books 2016), a book designed to help readers navigate all the changes of their lives, drawing upon the collective wisdom of twenty-five change-innovators across many fields. She is the author of the novel, Donny and Ursula Save the World, “the funniest book about love, sex, and GMO seeds you’ll ever read.” (Passing 4 Normal Press 2013) She is also the host of Passing 4 Normal Podcast, conversations about change, available on iTunes. sharonweilauthor.com
ChangeAbility: Facing the Unknown
Published on LVBX Magazine.
At a recent book signing, one of the audience members said to me, “It’s not that I mind change, it’s just that I hate not knowing what’s going to happen.” That’s right. Despite our calculations and insurances, our opinion polls and predictions, what’s going to happen next is uncertain. Even when we think we know what we know, it’s only ever a guess—an educated guess at best. What we do know is that this next moment will change—only we don’t know how, when, or why. As I’m writing this, I just heard that one of my friends was promoted at her work, today. A change she’d been hoping for. I also heard news that my teenage cousin had three friends who were killed in a car accident this morning. A tragic change nobody wanted.
If we are going to develop greater ChangeAbility, that is, a more flexible response to meeting the changes that come our way, then we need to accept—or at the very least, acknowledge—that our entire human existence is flux: unpredictable and unknowable from one minute to the next.
This is a very difficult idea to hold on to for any length of time. The American Buddhist nun, teacher, and best selling author, Pema Chödrön, writes in her book, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change, “As human beings we share a tendency to scramble for certainty whenever we realize that everything around us is in flux. In difficult times, the stress of trying to find solid ground—something predictable and safe to stand on—seems to intensify. But in truth, the very nature of our existence is forever in flux. Everything keeps changing, whether we’re aware of it or not.”
PATTERNS
Amidst this fluctuating and unknowable world, we do find patterns, tendencies and consistencies; familiar ways that calm and comfort us. As an example: this is my house where I live, these are the neighbors’ cars that park in front of my house, these are the trees and flowers I planted in my yard, this is the time I go off to work, this is the time I return home for the night. I orient myself to these patterns, especially if these patterns are repeated over and over again. Repeated patterns allow me to make assumptions about my environment and my life, freeing up my attention to be placed elsewhere.
DISRUPTION AND DISORIENTATION
The familiarity of routines and satisfied expectations calms me. But enter change, and I no longer will be able to respond from the patterns I have come to know. This can be disconcerting. With the introduction of any change, the patterns become disrupted; my routine can’t continue in the same way. That job promotion has given my friend different responsibilities and a new workspace; a remodel to my house would change where I walk in the front door; my cousin’s friends are gone. Change is always disruptive; it requires that we make shifts and course corrections. Unknown change is disorienting, especially if I am oriented around the status quo.
How do you reorient when you’ve been disrupted? What are the ways that you regain balance, find your “center,” or move in a new direction when your patterns have been interrupted, often by sudden change? Or, how do you reorient when you intentionally disrupt them by electing a surgery, moving to a new city, or finding a new love? How do you find your way back to center, to hope, to normal—or to a new normal—when nothing around you looks or feels familiar?
“Change is always disruptive; it requires that we make shifts and course corrections. Unknown change is disorienting, especially if I am oriented around the status quo.”
DEVELOP A PRACTICE
This is where a practice comes in handy: mediation, exercise, dance, running, yoga, walks in the woods, keeping a daily writing journal, knitting, playing a musical instrument, a weekly meeting with a good friend. You build a regular practice that helps you find center, remain calm, regain equilibrium, and integrate new information from all the small changes that each day brings so that when a large wave of change comes up and upends you, you already have the practice of how to reorient in order to right yourself.
A practice is how we orient to the movement of change within the movement of change, not stopping dead in our tracks in fear and overwhelm when change moves too rapidly or erratically. I’m more adaptive when I can align my own internal movement of change with the larger movements of external change around me, rather than meeting that movement with resistance. The practice of reorienting helps us to make those necessary shifts as they come. I know from experience, it requires much more momentum to get movement going again from a stopped place than from a place of movement, especially if I’m needing to move in a new direction. It’s much easier to ride a bicycle uphill when you’ve built up the momentum than to climb from a stationary beginning at the bottom of the hill.
Certain types of activities can help you in increasing the capacity for variation and authentic response within your system. An effective practice for meeting change might be something that includes working with different contrasts, diverse rhythms and tempos, a sense of play, and by all means, fun; variations that allow you a spectrum of choice and the experience of innovation to meet life’s movement in varied ways, not just more predictable patterned movement. This includes activities that engage physical flexibility, mental playfulness, artful curiosity, novelty, and attention to how I am feeling while I am doing each of these activities.
“A practice is how we orient to the movement of change within the movement of change, not stopping dead in our tracks in fear and overwhelm when change moves too rapidly or erratically.”
YES…AND
An improvisational approach to meeting change has been vital to Jackie Welch Schlicher, performing artist and ceramicist, and a featured contributor on my podcast and in my book, ChangeAbility: How Artists, Activists, and Awakeners Navigate Change. Jackie’s years of experience as a highly skilled, extremely funny improvisational actress has equipped her to translate that approach into her every day life, as well. When change come her way, she responds with “yes…and.” This is her way of accepting the change that has arrived, and then finding where the next place to go with it might be. By being responsive in the moment, she treats a sudden change of dinner plans, a flat tire on the way to an important appointment, or disappointment over a glaze burnt in the kiln the same as the unexpected line or action her scene partner throws at her on stage. “Yes…and” asks us to look for new ways to frame the current situation, and to look for new resources in response.
For anyone who has seen an improv comedy show, it’s not an option for a player to stop the scene if they don’t know how to respond to move the scene forward. Nor is it really an option in life to stop your own action when the scene takes a turn you were not expecting. The nature of life is that your scenes will often turn in ways you were not expecting. “Yes…and” is a good place begin.
Part of this practice of “yes…and” is to recognize what word you habitually use, internally, when meeting change. Is it Yes? No? Oh no!? Hell No!? Or it is Yes…and?
To Jackie, the unexpected and the unknown are exciting. The unexpected brings forward novelty and creativity, which can be exhilarating. The unknown challenges her to take leaps of faith, which can ultimately provide her with lasting trust. Saying “yes…and” and following the impulse of her response leads her into what she calls, “the magic of the unexpected.”
IMAGINATION
Another important practice in living with the unknown is to be able to recognize our imagination, and to be able to distinguish between the creations of our imagination and the accuracy of our perceptions right here, right now. When we gaze into the unknown darkness of what we cannot see ahead, it’s too easy to project our imagined fears or our imagined hopes into that void. Our imagination can be our ally and lift us to new possibilities and considerations. Our imagination can also do us great harm by taking us into our worst fears and convincing us that this is the truth. We might tell ourselves that considering grave outcomes is preparing us, and therefore protecting us, from unseen dangers. We tell ourselves all sorts of things. We tell ourselves stories to somehow calm our uncertainty. I know. I’m a writer. Writers use their imaginations to make up stories to explain the unknown, but the possible future is still, for all intents and purposes, unknown, and perhaps even yet to be formed.
The best way I know how to meet the unknown is by grounding myself in the sensory awareness of what I can know in this very moment. This perspective of using my eyes, ears, nose, taste, touch, and feeling sense to locate myself in this very moment is all I can really know or trust. Though many of the change experts in my book have different names for it; all would agree on calling this felt sense “presence.” Presence is the feeling sense of being still, and at the same time aware and connected within myself and with my surroundings. It is the state of awareness.
How do you find presence? Take a breath. Feel it spiral up through your nostrils and down into your chest. What is the quality of your breath? Is your breath full, constricted, soft, welcome, grasping, ignored? Most people will not trust what they cannot see, feel, or experience in some way with their senses. What did it look like? How did it sound? How did my breath and heartbeat feel within my own chest when I heard it? This is what I can know. This is how I can locate myself, right now. Not in my imagined hopes or fears, not in my plans, expectations, or my agenda for the day, but to feel myself in rapport with myself, with other people, and with my surroundings in a shared resonance of presence and awareness. In this way, what can be known will make itself known to me. My ability to return to this state of presence can be practiced. It can become my reorientation practice, and it will increase my ChangeAbility when the big waves of unknown change come crashing to my shores.
Sharon Weil is the author of ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change (Archer/Rare Bird Books 2016), a book designed to help readers navigate all the changes of their lives, drawing upon the collective wisdom of twenty-five change-innovators across many fields. She is the author of the novel, Donny and Ursula Save the World, “the funniest book about love, sex, and GMO seeds you’ll ever read.” (Passing 4 Normal Press 2013) She is also the host of Passing 4 Normal Podcast, conversations about change. sharonweilauthor.com
At a recent book signing, one of the audience members said to me, “It’s not that I mind change, it’s just that I hate not knowing what’s going to happen.” That’s right. Despite our calculations and insurances, our opinion polls and predictions, what’s going to happen next is uncertain. Even when we think we know what we know, it’s only ever a guess—an educated guess at best. What we do know is that this next moment will change—only we don’t know how, when, or why. As I’m writing this, I just heard that one of my friends was promoted at her work, today. A change she’d been hoping for. I also heard news that my teenage cousin had three friends who were killed in a car accident this morning. A tragic change nobody wanted.
If we are going to develop greater ChangeAbility, that is, a more flexible response to meeting the changes that come our way, then we need to accept—or at the very least, acknowledge—that our entire human existence is flux: unpredictable and unknowable from one minute to the next.
This is a very difficult idea to hold on to for any length of time. The American Buddhist nun, teacher, and best selling author, Pema Chödrön, writes in her book, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change, “As human beings we share a tendency to scramble for certainty whenever we realize that everything around us is in flux. In difficult times, the stress of trying to find solid ground—something predictable and safe to stand on—seems to intensify. But in truth, the very nature of our existence is forever in flux. Everything keeps changing, whether we’re aware of it or not.”
PATTERNS
Amidst this fluctuating and unknowable world, we do find patterns, tendencies and consistencies; familiar ways that calm and comfort us. As an example: this is my house where I live, these are the neighbors’ cars that park in front of my house, these are the trees and flowers I planted in my yard, this is the time I go off to work, this is the time I return home for the night. I orient myself to these patterns, especially if these patterns are repeated over and over again. Repeated patterns allow me to make assumptions about my environment and my life, freeing up my attention to be placed elsewhere.
DISRUPTION AND DISORIENTATION
The familiarity of routines and satisfied expectations calms me. But enter change, and I no longer will be able to respond from the patterns I have come to know. This can be disconcerting. With the introduction of any change, the patterns become disrupted; my routine can’t continue in the same way. That job promotion has given my friend different responsibilities and a new workspace; a remodel to my house would change where I walk in the front door; my cousin’s friends are gone. Change is always disruptive; it requires that we make shifts and course corrections. Unknown change is disorienting, especially if I am oriented around the status quo.
How do you reorient when you’ve been disrupted? What are the ways that you regain balance, find your “center,” or move in a new direction when your patterns have been interrupted, often by sudden change? Or, how do you reorient when you intentionally disrupt them by electing a surgery, moving to a new city, or finding a new love? How do you find your way back to center, to hope, to normal—or to a new normal—when nothing around you looks or feels familiar?
“Change is always disruptive; it requires that we make shifts and course corrections. Unknown change is disorienting, especially if I am oriented around the status quo.”
DEVELOP A PRACTICE
This is where a practice comes in handy: mediation, exercise, dance, running, yoga, walks in the woods, keeping a daily writing journal, knitting, playing a musical instrument, a weekly meeting with a good friend. You build a regular practice that helps you find center, remain calm, regain equilibrium, and integrate new information from all the small changes that each day brings so that when a large wave of change comes up and upends you, you already have the practice of how to reorient in order to right yourself.
A practice is how we orient to the movement of change within the movement of change, not stopping dead in our tracks in fear and overwhelm when change moves too rapidly or erratically. I’m more adaptive when I can align my own internal movement of change with the larger movements of external change around me, rather than meeting that movement with resistance. The practice of reorienting helps us to make those necessary shifts as they come. I know from experience, it requires much more momentum to get movement going again from a stopped place than from a place of movement, especially if I’m needing to move in a new direction. It’s much easier to ride a bicycle uphill when you’ve built up the momentum than to climb from a stationary beginning at the bottom of the hill.
Certain types of activities can help you in increasing the capacity for variation and authentic response within your system. An effective practice for meeting change might be something that includes working with different contrasts, diverse rhythms and tempos, a sense of play, and by all means, fun; variations that allow you a spectrum of choice and the experience of innovation to meet life’s movement in varied ways, not just more predictable patterned movement. This includes activities that engage physical flexibility, mental playfulness, artful curiosity, novelty, and attention to how I am feeling while I am doing each of these activities.
“A practice is how we orient to the movement of change within the movement of change, not stopping dead in our tracks in fear and overwhelm when change moves too rapidly or erratically.”
YES…AND
An improvisational approach to meeting change has been vital to Jackie Welch Schlicher, performing artist and ceramicist, and a featured contributor on my podcast and in my book, ChangeAbility: How Artists, Activists, and Awakeners Navigate Change. Jackie’s years of experience as a highly skilled, extremely funny improvisational actress has equipped her to translate that approach into her every day life, as well. When change come her way, she responds with “yes…and.” This is her way of accepting the change that has arrived, and then finding where the next place to go with it might be. By being responsive in the moment, she treats a sudden change of dinner plans, a flat tire on the way to an important appointment, or disappointment over a glaze burnt in the kiln the same as the unexpected line or action her scene partner throws at her on stage. “Yes…and” asks us to look for new ways to frame the current situation, and to look for new resources in response.
For anyone who has seen an improv comedy show, it’s not an option for a player to stop the scene if they don’t know how to respond to move the scene forward. Nor is it really an option in life to stop your own action when the scene takes a turn you were not expecting. The nature of life is that your scenes will often turn in ways you were not expecting. “Yes…and” is a good place begin.
Part of this practice of “yes…and” is to recognize what word you habitually use, internally, when meeting change. Is it Yes? No? Oh no!? Hell No!? Or it is Yes…and?
To Jackie, the unexpected and the unknown are exciting. The unexpected brings forward novelty and creativity, which can be exhilarating. The unknown challenges her to take leaps of faith, which can ultimately provide her with lasting trust. Saying “yes…and” and following the impulse of her response leads her into what she calls, “the magic of the unexpected.”
IMAGINATION
Another important practice in living with the unknown is to be able to recognize our imagination, and to be able to distinguish between the creations of our imagination and the accuracy of our perceptions right here, right now. When we gaze into the unknown darkness of what we cannot see ahead, it’s too easy to project our imagined fears or our imagined hopes into that void. Our imagination can be our ally and lift us to new possibilities and considerations. Our imagination can also do us great harm by taking us into our worst fears and convincing us that this is the truth. We might tell ourselves that considering grave outcomes is preparing us, and therefore protecting us, from unseen dangers. We tell ourselves all sorts of things. We tell ourselves stories to somehow calm our uncertainty. I know. I’m a writer. Writers use their imaginations to make up stories to explain the unknown, but the possible future is still, for all intents and purposes, unknown, and perhaps even yet to be formed.
The best way I know how to meet the unknown is by grounding myself in the sensory awareness of what I can know in this very moment. This perspective of using my eyes, ears, nose, taste, touch, and feeling sense to locate myself in this very moment is all I can really know or trust. Though many of the change experts in my book have different names for it; all would agree on calling this felt sense “presence.” Presence is the feeling sense of being still, and at the same time aware and connected within myself and with my surroundings. It is the state of awareness.
How do you find presence? Take a breath. Feel it spiral up through your nostrils and down into your chest. What is the quality of your breath? Is your breath full, constricted, soft, welcome, grasping, ignored? Most people will not trust what they cannot see, feel, or experience in some way with their senses. What did it look like? How did it sound? How did my breath and heartbeat feel within my own chest when I heard it? This is what I can know. This is how I can locate myself, right now. Not in my imagined hopes or fears, not in my plans, expectations, or my agenda for the day, but to feel myself in rapport with myself, with other people, and with my surroundings in a shared resonance of presence and awareness. In this way, what can be known will make itself known to me. My ability to return to this state of presence can be practiced. It can become my reorientation practice, and it will increase my ChangeAbility when the big waves of unknown change come crashing to my shores.
Sharon Weil is the author of ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change (Archer/Rare Bird Books 2016), a book designed to help readers navigate all the changes of their lives, drawing upon the collective wisdom of twenty-five change-innovators across many fields. She is the author of the novel, Donny and Ursula Save the World, “the funniest book about love, sex, and GMO seeds you’ll ever read.” (Passing 4 Normal Press 2013) She is also the host of Passing 4 Normal Podcast, conversations about change. sharonweilauthor.com
Why Am I So Afraid to Change?
Originally published in LVBX Magazine.
Why is it that I’m so afraid to change? Or, I want to make a change but find myself dragging my feet, back paddling, or completely freezing when the time comes? Whether it’s a change in my job or my relationships, even a change to improve my health, or my outward appearance, it’s as the great author and humorist, Mark Twain, said, “The only person who likes change is a wet baby.” And even they cry about it!
NAVIGATING CHANGE
Change will always bring with it the unknown, which can be exciting or frightening depending upon how I meet change in general, or to what degree I have what I call, ChangeAbility. My ChangeAbility is my ability to navigate change with effectiveness and ease—which I’m either doing well or not so well depending on the day, and the quality or severity of the change at hand. In this fast-moving world of complex, modern life, it serves me well to develop a flexible response to change, whether I’m initiating that change for the first time, like starting a new business, or having to adapt to a change that has already occurred, like finding a new job after twenty years because I was downsized. If I don’t build a flexible response to change, I can become overly stressed, confused, and overwhelmed; or I can become rigid, stubborn in my ways, and toppled over by the forces that are changing around me. I’m sure you know the feeling.
It’s important to understand that change is happening all the time. From moment to moment and from breath to breath, nothing ever remains the same. My biological processes, my organs, the nature of the cells that comprise my body, and the elements of my environments are in constant cycles of flux, by design. The nature of my human existence is fluid, mutable, and forever changing. It’s a miracle that I can recognize myself in the mirror when I wake each morning because so many tiny events within me and outside of me changed while I was sleeping. Therefore, I look upon all change as the movement of change, and as I say in my book, “What I experience of change is either the flow of the movement of change or my resistance to it.”
OVERCOMING RESISTANCE, OVERCOMING FEAR
The movement of change wants to flow like the river, but it is often impeded by resistance. Physical resistance, emotional resistance; we all recognize it. Resistance to change can profess a myriad of reasons and take many forms. These are the voices that either stop me in my tracks or slow me way down, often knocking me out of the rightful, effective timing in my response to needed change. The most familiar voices of resistance are:
Attachment: “I want things to turn out my way or no way at all.”
Procrastination: “Sure, I’ll make a change, only I’ll do it later.“
Denial: “There is no change happening, and therefore I don’t need to respond, adapt, or do anything differently.”
Anxiety: “OMG, things are changing and I can’t handle it!”
My response to my anxiety: “I don’t like feeling this anxiety so I’m not going to do anything that will cause my anxiety to rise, therefore, I’m not going to make that change.”
And, self-doubt that can come in at any time and undermine it all: “Really? You think YOU can do THAT?”
All of these expressions of resistance are different faces of fear, and the ultimate fear of all fears is the fear of endings. It’s a harsh thing to say, but the fear of endings is the fear of death—deaths large and small. These fears show up as the fear of the ending of an era, of my marriage, of my career path, of the way it used to be—however it use to be. I don’t want to make a change because it will mean the end, and I don’t want—fill in the blank—to end. In the most personal way, my fear that this body of mine will no longer serve me in health or in beauty, as it ages, can cause me to hit every expression of resistance on that list: attachment, denial, procrastination, self-doubt, anxiety and anxiety over my anxiety. Change often brings with it loss, and grief is a necessary response to allow the movement of change to flow.
When open, the flow of tears moves like the flow of the river. And so, we grieve the endings of places and times as we would grieve the death of a loved one; a necessary transition for something new to be born.
MAKING A MISTAKE
When it comes to the fear of making change, some fears are large, some are small, but even the small fears are still fears. And the largest of the small fears is my fear of making a mistake. Somehow the fear of experiencing embarrassment, shame, or hurt feelings does not equal a true death, but my fear of rejection or the ridicule of appearing the fool can prevent me from taking steps on my own behalf if the territory is new and perceived of as a risk. How many times have you stepped back because you were in a new situation and didn’t want to make a mistake? I know I have.
It may well be an exaggeration to say that my resistance to changing the color of my bedroom, or the make of my car, or the style of my hair is a fear of death, but with each change I make I do change how I perceive myself, or how I believe I’m perceived by others, and if I’m attached to how that goes, then I experience it as an end or a death of how I have known myself. If that self-perception is somehow judged, criticized, or ridiculed, then I could be very reluctant and resistant to take steps towards change, even simple ones. Dying my hair bright pink may be shocking and have my friends thinking I’ve gone all hipster, but it can grow out. Take that into something with a more serious impact and consequence, like if I have my breasts removed in mastectomy surgery as a treatment for cancer, then the way that others see me, or how I see myself, can become radically altered. If not welcomed, it can leave emotional scars as well as physical ones, and I can feel shame. In wanting to avoid feelings of shame, I might not elect the necessary medical treatment, and that could prove tragic.
Why is the fear of public speaking always at the top of all lists of common fears, higher on the list than the fear of being mauled by a bear? I’m afraid of making a mistake—and doing it in public!
WE ALL TRY OUR BEST
No one tries to make a bad choice in the moment. We all try our best with what we know at the time. I know I do. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I tell myself. I wouldn’t have made that choice if it had seemed otherwise, nor would you. But sometimes even the best ideas go astray, or more likely, as time goes on the fuller picture fills in, like the way the sunlight interacts with that soft green color I painted on my bedroom walls turning it to a mucky gray, or that job I took requires way more time and overtime than I expected. Anyone who has ever volunteered for a committee at their child’s school will know exactly what I mean about something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but then the job fills in to be way more work than you ever could imagine.
When I’m in a difficult patch, I find it reassuring to remind myself that things are always changing, always moving, and that this too will pass, this too will change. Whether it’s during one of my most arduous times, or my most cherished ones, it all changes over time, and always will. That awareness helps me let go of my resistance. Accepting the constant movement of change helps me appreciate the specialness of the moment, even as it is evolving into something new.
THE BENEFITS OF RESISTANCE
Not all resistance to change should be given a bad rap. My very resistance, my procrastination, attachments, even my cautions and fears helps me regulate whenever life is giving me too much, too fast. Resistance has the function and the ability to slow things down when needed, like how the landing flaps of an airplane provide resistance in order to slow down the speed of the landing aircraft, or the open parachute provides resistance to break the speed of the descending skydiver. Resistance can also be used to harness energy and create movement, like when the wind meets the fabric of the sails on a sailboat, pushing the vessel along, or when an NBA basketball player presses down into the floor in order to get the lift in his jump as he reaches for the basket. Cell walls create a protective boundary, keeping everything that belongs inside the cell, inside, and everything that belongs on the outside, out. So does my human skin. Resistance can serve me well in helping me pace out and parcel out what my nervous system and psyche can accommodate when it comes to integrating new information and events. Taking it slowly, even through procrastination of action can allow me to reorient to new circumstances in a timing that is more comfortable to me. In that case, my own resistance assists me to proceed incrementally through the change scenarios of my life. However, I don’t want to get stuck in my resistance, so much so that there is a logjam in the flow of the movement of change.
LOCATING THE NATURE OF THE CHANGE
Using my ChangeAbility, when I navigate change I’m also navigating my resistance to change. I do that by locating the nature of the change that I’m in. Sometimes my resistance to change is not a resistance to the change itself, but to other factors such as the speed of change, or to the unseen, unknown aspects of what is being asked of me. I may welcome the change, such as anticipating the birth of my child, but I may have difficulty with the speed of the movement of change, like in those last weeks of heavy, overripe pregnancy when it feels that the baby will never come but my entire physiology is ready and all I can think about is getting this baby out, or the opposite, when the baby arrives early and I don’t even have diapers in the house. The challenge I have with change could also be because so much of change cannot be seen until it arrives, and often it arrives, unannounced, with force, like if I had no warning signs when I suddenly went into labor in the middle of a department store.
I could say, “I am not a person who likes change,” but what I might really mean is that I can’t tolerate change when things go too quickly and I feel swept up with no time to reorient. Even desired change, when it’s moving too fast for my system to tolerate, could cause me to put up resistance. I might love my boyfriend with all my heart and be ecstatic when he proposes marriage, but when he tells me he’s being transferred in his job across the country and we have to move next week, then it becomes a complex change, the speed of which may just be too much for me to cozy up to. If I experience resistance, it’s because events are simply moving too fast, and I need to slow them down. On the other end of the spectrum in my tolerance for the speed of change, if I say, “I’m not good at making change,” it may just be that I lose patience, hope, and stamina when a change moves so slowly that I can’t see the results, like recovering from a long illness, going on a diet, or the difficult daily work of recovering from addiction.
I work hard not to judge my resistance to change, and I hope you can too. When you find compassion for your resistance, you can be afraid of change and still step into its stream. Look to see how slowing down the movement of change might serve you. Are there any benefits to creating a delay? If it’s not serving you, then ask yourself about the nature of the change you are in. Is it a fast change, or a slow one? Is it a seen change, or an unseen change? What are the rhythms of change that you are most comfortable with, and how can you bring your change scenario into those rhythms? What is needed to help bring more movement to this change in the direction you want it to go?
I have discovered Seven Principles for Change that are extremely helpful to understanding more about the very nature of each change scenario that I am in, and how to bring more movement into stuck situations, increasing ChangeAbility at all levels. These helpful tools illuminate how you can find more support in navigating change. You might want to find out more by reading ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change.
Please, don’t be afraid of change, for change is moving all the time. When you recognize the movement of change, and align with that movement then your resistance softens and you are already supported in guiding the changes of your life in the direction you hope they will go. Step in to change, and proceed incrementally, navigating as you go. You will find that your ChangeAbility will carry you far.
-----------
Sharon Weil is the author of ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change (Archer/Rare Bird Books 2016), a book designed to help readers navigate all the changes of their lives, drawing upon the collective wisdom of twenty-five change-innovators across many fields. She is the author of the novel, Donny and Ursula Save the World, “the funniest book about love, sex, and GMO seeds you’ll ever read.” (Passing 4 Normal Press 2013) She is also the host of Passing 4 Normal Podcast, conversations about change. sharonweilauthor.com
Why is it that I’m so afraid to change? Or, I want to make a change but find myself dragging my feet, back paddling, or completely freezing when the time comes? Whether it’s a change in my job or my relationships, even a change to improve my health, or my outward appearance, it’s as the great author and humorist, Mark Twain, said, “The only person who likes change is a wet baby.” And even they cry about it!
NAVIGATING CHANGE
Change will always bring with it the unknown, which can be exciting or frightening depending upon how I meet change in general, or to what degree I have what I call, ChangeAbility. My ChangeAbility is my ability to navigate change with effectiveness and ease—which I’m either doing well or not so well depending on the day, and the quality or severity of the change at hand. In this fast-moving world of complex, modern life, it serves me well to develop a flexible response to change, whether I’m initiating that change for the first time, like starting a new business, or having to adapt to a change that has already occurred, like finding a new job after twenty years because I was downsized. If I don’t build a flexible response to change, I can become overly stressed, confused, and overwhelmed; or I can become rigid, stubborn in my ways, and toppled over by the forces that are changing around me. I’m sure you know the feeling.
It’s important to understand that change is happening all the time. From moment to moment and from breath to breath, nothing ever remains the same. My biological processes, my organs, the nature of the cells that comprise my body, and the elements of my environments are in constant cycles of flux, by design. The nature of my human existence is fluid, mutable, and forever changing. It’s a miracle that I can recognize myself in the mirror when I wake each morning because so many tiny events within me and outside of me changed while I was sleeping. Therefore, I look upon all change as the movement of change, and as I say in my book, “What I experience of change is either the flow of the movement of change or my resistance to it.”
OVERCOMING RESISTANCE, OVERCOMING FEAR
The movement of change wants to flow like the river, but it is often impeded by resistance. Physical resistance, emotional resistance; we all recognize it. Resistance to change can profess a myriad of reasons and take many forms. These are the voices that either stop me in my tracks or slow me way down, often knocking me out of the rightful, effective timing in my response to needed change. The most familiar voices of resistance are:
Attachment: “I want things to turn out my way or no way at all.”
Procrastination: “Sure, I’ll make a change, only I’ll do it later.“
Denial: “There is no change happening, and therefore I don’t need to respond, adapt, or do anything differently.”
Anxiety: “OMG, things are changing and I can’t handle it!”
My response to my anxiety: “I don’t like feeling this anxiety so I’m not going to do anything that will cause my anxiety to rise, therefore, I’m not going to make that change.”
And, self-doubt that can come in at any time and undermine it all: “Really? You think YOU can do THAT?”
All of these expressions of resistance are different faces of fear, and the ultimate fear of all fears is the fear of endings. It’s a harsh thing to say, but the fear of endings is the fear of death—deaths large and small. These fears show up as the fear of the ending of an era, of my marriage, of my career path, of the way it used to be—however it use to be. I don’t want to make a change because it will mean the end, and I don’t want—fill in the blank—to end. In the most personal way, my fear that this body of mine will no longer serve me in health or in beauty, as it ages, can cause me to hit every expression of resistance on that list: attachment, denial, procrastination, self-doubt, anxiety and anxiety over my anxiety. Change often brings with it loss, and grief is a necessary response to allow the movement of change to flow.
When open, the flow of tears moves like the flow of the river. And so, we grieve the endings of places and times as we would grieve the death of a loved one; a necessary transition for something new to be born.
MAKING A MISTAKE
When it comes to the fear of making change, some fears are large, some are small, but even the small fears are still fears. And the largest of the small fears is my fear of making a mistake. Somehow the fear of experiencing embarrassment, shame, or hurt feelings does not equal a true death, but my fear of rejection or the ridicule of appearing the fool can prevent me from taking steps on my own behalf if the territory is new and perceived of as a risk. How many times have you stepped back because you were in a new situation and didn’t want to make a mistake? I know I have.
It may well be an exaggeration to say that my resistance to changing the color of my bedroom, or the make of my car, or the style of my hair is a fear of death, but with each change I make I do change how I perceive myself, or how I believe I’m perceived by others, and if I’m attached to how that goes, then I experience it as an end or a death of how I have known myself. If that self-perception is somehow judged, criticized, or ridiculed, then I could be very reluctant and resistant to take steps towards change, even simple ones. Dying my hair bright pink may be shocking and have my friends thinking I’ve gone all hipster, but it can grow out. Take that into something with a more serious impact and consequence, like if I have my breasts removed in mastectomy surgery as a treatment for cancer, then the way that others see me, or how I see myself, can become radically altered. If not welcomed, it can leave emotional scars as well as physical ones, and I can feel shame. In wanting to avoid feelings of shame, I might not elect the necessary medical treatment, and that could prove tragic.
Why is the fear of public speaking always at the top of all lists of common fears, higher on the list than the fear of being mauled by a bear? I’m afraid of making a mistake—and doing it in public!
WE ALL TRY OUR BEST
No one tries to make a bad choice in the moment. We all try our best with what we know at the time. I know I do. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I tell myself. I wouldn’t have made that choice if it had seemed otherwise, nor would you. But sometimes even the best ideas go astray, or more likely, as time goes on the fuller picture fills in, like the way the sunlight interacts with that soft green color I painted on my bedroom walls turning it to a mucky gray, or that job I took requires way more time and overtime than I expected. Anyone who has ever volunteered for a committee at their child’s school will know exactly what I mean about something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but then the job fills in to be way more work than you ever could imagine.
When I’m in a difficult patch, I find it reassuring to remind myself that things are always changing, always moving, and that this too will pass, this too will change. Whether it’s during one of my most arduous times, or my most cherished ones, it all changes over time, and always will. That awareness helps me let go of my resistance. Accepting the constant movement of change helps me appreciate the specialness of the moment, even as it is evolving into something new.
THE BENEFITS OF RESISTANCE
Not all resistance to change should be given a bad rap. My very resistance, my procrastination, attachments, even my cautions and fears helps me regulate whenever life is giving me too much, too fast. Resistance has the function and the ability to slow things down when needed, like how the landing flaps of an airplane provide resistance in order to slow down the speed of the landing aircraft, or the open parachute provides resistance to break the speed of the descending skydiver. Resistance can also be used to harness energy and create movement, like when the wind meets the fabric of the sails on a sailboat, pushing the vessel along, or when an NBA basketball player presses down into the floor in order to get the lift in his jump as he reaches for the basket. Cell walls create a protective boundary, keeping everything that belongs inside the cell, inside, and everything that belongs on the outside, out. So does my human skin. Resistance can serve me well in helping me pace out and parcel out what my nervous system and psyche can accommodate when it comes to integrating new information and events. Taking it slowly, even through procrastination of action can allow me to reorient to new circumstances in a timing that is more comfortable to me. In that case, my own resistance assists me to proceed incrementally through the change scenarios of my life. However, I don’t want to get stuck in my resistance, so much so that there is a logjam in the flow of the movement of change.
LOCATING THE NATURE OF THE CHANGE
Using my ChangeAbility, when I navigate change I’m also navigating my resistance to change. I do that by locating the nature of the change that I’m in. Sometimes my resistance to change is not a resistance to the change itself, but to other factors such as the speed of change, or to the unseen, unknown aspects of what is being asked of me. I may welcome the change, such as anticipating the birth of my child, but I may have difficulty with the speed of the movement of change, like in those last weeks of heavy, overripe pregnancy when it feels that the baby will never come but my entire physiology is ready and all I can think about is getting this baby out, or the opposite, when the baby arrives early and I don’t even have diapers in the house. The challenge I have with change could also be because so much of change cannot be seen until it arrives, and often it arrives, unannounced, with force, like if I had no warning signs when I suddenly went into labor in the middle of a department store.
I could say, “I am not a person who likes change,” but what I might really mean is that I can’t tolerate change when things go too quickly and I feel swept up with no time to reorient. Even desired change, when it’s moving too fast for my system to tolerate, could cause me to put up resistance. I might love my boyfriend with all my heart and be ecstatic when he proposes marriage, but when he tells me he’s being transferred in his job across the country and we have to move next week, then it becomes a complex change, the speed of which may just be too much for me to cozy up to. If I experience resistance, it’s because events are simply moving too fast, and I need to slow them down. On the other end of the spectrum in my tolerance for the speed of change, if I say, “I’m not good at making change,” it may just be that I lose patience, hope, and stamina when a change moves so slowly that I can’t see the results, like recovering from a long illness, going on a diet, or the difficult daily work of recovering from addiction.
I work hard not to judge my resistance to change, and I hope you can too. When you find compassion for your resistance, you can be afraid of change and still step into its stream. Look to see how slowing down the movement of change might serve you. Are there any benefits to creating a delay? If it’s not serving you, then ask yourself about the nature of the change you are in. Is it a fast change, or a slow one? Is it a seen change, or an unseen change? What are the rhythms of change that you are most comfortable with, and how can you bring your change scenario into those rhythms? What is needed to help bring more movement to this change in the direction you want it to go?
I have discovered Seven Principles for Change that are extremely helpful to understanding more about the very nature of each change scenario that I am in, and how to bring more movement into stuck situations, increasing ChangeAbility at all levels. These helpful tools illuminate how you can find more support in navigating change. You might want to find out more by reading ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change.
Please, don’t be afraid of change, for change is moving all the time. When you recognize the movement of change, and align with that movement then your resistance softens and you are already supported in guiding the changes of your life in the direction you hope they will go. Step in to change, and proceed incrementally, navigating as you go. You will find that your ChangeAbility will carry you far.
-----------
Sharon Weil is the author of ChangeAbility, How Artists, Activists and Awakeners Navigate Change (Archer/Rare Bird Books 2016), a book designed to help readers navigate all the changes of their lives, drawing upon the collective wisdom of twenty-five change-innovators across many fields. She is the author of the novel, Donny and Ursula Save the World, “the funniest book about love, sex, and GMO seeds you’ll ever read.” (Passing 4 Normal Press 2013) She is also the host of Passing 4 Normal Podcast, conversations about change. sharonweilauthor.com
