Making Friends with Change – New Beginnings (2)

We’re not ships….
As I wrote in my last post, writing about beginnings felt like wading through treacle. Or to use the image from the Limbo Stage, I was finding it hard to see clearly through the fog.
Surely it would be easier to turn back using that well trodden path, so returning to a situation that is familiar, wouldn’t it?
But is that what we truly want for a beginning though? As the oft used quote says, ‘ships are safest in harbour but that’s not what ships are built for’.
Well, we’re not ships but our life is a journey and in the great scheme of things, it’s not a very long one. And as soon as we are born, there is one true certainty, that our life will end. When and how we die, we have some choice.
But only some.
That statement rests, of course, on a certain belief. A belief that accepts that the person I have got used to calling ‘I’ is not my true self: it’s my ego, something that desperately wants me to believe it’s in charge of my life and, indeed, of all of Life.
Why is it so insistent and, well, loud? It’s because it knows from the moment it comes into form that it will die. It has no life beyond the life of our body. And what I’m calling our true self doesn’t cease in the same way.
Can I prove this using science or in a laboratory experiment? Not at all. It’s partly a matter of belief which creates a perception of what I call reality.
And it’s also to do with where I look for reassurance.

Reassurance
For this, I look to the natural world. Nature seems to have little ego at work and to do pretty well, despite our attempts to affect it adversely.
Having this belief creates a ‘truth’ that I’m  more comfortable with, one that creates more trust, more acceptance of being held, cared for, looked after. This has  allowed me to make choices to follow a path that fits the true version of myself, the real ‘person’ I believe myself to be.
Did I begin my life like this? Definitely not. And since that start. I’ve often faltered with many twists, turns and returns as I continued to forget this. But time and again, and this is definitely one of those times, as the ‘jigsaw puzzle’ of our lives gets thrown into the air, I am reminded of who I really am, and what and who are important to me.

Snake Oil Solution?
Of course, I could provide you with a ’10 steps to a new beginning’ formula, but that would really be a ‘snake oil’  solution with a false promise of easy satisfaction.
Beginnings, in my experience, are messy.
Remembering Bridges’ model (wmbridges.com), beginnings are likely to begin with the germ of an idea.
In current climate, this is an interesting expression isn’t it, bearing in mind our increasing distrust of the microscopic, invisible world.
We have muddled ‘hygiene’ with ‘sterility’, forgetting that our bodies are a community of trillions of cells, containing germs, bacteria, viruses and cancers every single moment. And it’s when we become out of balance, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually that it shows up in the ‘what is’ of our lives.
Sadly, more than ever, the message seems to be, better to trust the visible, the provable, the ‘what is’.
The trouble with that message is it devalues and dismisses the way we create something intangible into a physical form: a poem, story, play, a painting, drawing, sculpture, a piece of music, a recipe, an item of clothing, a game, a piece of software. To do that we need to call upon and be receptive to that which I’m calling:

The 8 Ingredients
Imagination     Intuition     Inspiration    Instinct     Invention     Impulse     Insight   Integrity

I’m interested to notice that these ‘ingredients’ were not as fully formed as I’ve just written them. When I began to write these posts, there weren’t 8 either. There might be more as the ‘germ’ grows, attracting more ingredients.
And isn’t this how anything comes into being? Haven’t you ever heard one line of a song or poem that somehow catches your attention in a way that you can’t explain?
Didn’t you once meet someone special at that party that you nearly didn’t go to? Or you express an idea to family and friends who either ignore it or deride you for its ‘unrealism’. But the idea just won’t leave you alone.
What about the friend who recommends a book or  going to an event? And despite refusing several times, they keep on about it so you finally agree to read it or attend it and it propels you on a path, one that your true self celebrates, which provides the fuel to keep you on this unfamiliar path. Until its no longer unfamiliar.

What is this refusal about?
Being creatures of habit, part of the challenge/opportunity of change is, as hypnotherapist Marisa Peer says , to make the unfamiliar familiar and to notice what words and pictures we are creating as we imagine our future self. (www.marisapeer.com)
Do phrases surface in our thoughts, like ‘Better the Devil you know….’ and we seek comfort in a repeated phrase of ‘When things get back to normal….’?
Our normal, learned state is one of mild alertness, just like any creature on the planet, We have all put ourselves in the predator/prey category. Our amygdala serves a helpful purpose in this regard but if we associate any change with danger and threat, our original brains take us over, moving us to a state of  increased alertness.
This chemical change affects our bodies and the signals we receive from an increased heart rate and shallower breathing, for example, are very easy to interpret as anxiety and fear. These create more readiness to behave as our mid brain dictates: fighting, fleeing, freezing, fainting or fawning.

An antidote
How to respond to these concerns created by the part of us that came on line very early in our lives to protect us? Let’s seek to understand first that protective part of us that encouraged us to cast to one side those behaviours that it classed as threatening to our very existence by those who cared for us from our birth.
Think about this: of all the creatures on the planet, we are the least prepared to become independent so it stands to reason that being too disagreeable at this early stage with our parents/care givers, teachers carries a threat to our safety.
Of course, the problem comes when we have reached an age which gives us degree of independence yet are still behaving as if we were those young children.

The consequence of conditioning
In short, most of us have been conditioned to be agreeable and compliant, lacking trust in our own wisdom, relying instead on the supposed wisdom and authority of others. As a consequence, creating safety is given a greater priority and emphasis than taking risks thereby reducing the amount of mistakes that we make.
Without the willingness to make mistakes, it’s impossible for us to develop trust in our own decisions and the wisdom that flows from learning from our mistakes. This means we may have to become disagreeable in order to establish our authentic way of being in the world.
And if this sounds like a description of what is supposed to happen during our teenage years, you’re absolutely right. Although for some of us, our ‘teenage years’ may happen decades later when we finally place a greater value on our authenticity than our attachment to care givers that may not even be physically alive.

Final Thoughts about New Beginnings – For Now!
Change is messy
Pay attention to those quiet nudges and prompts
Take small steps
Be willing to make mistakes
Let yourself feel any discomfort as the unfamiliar becomes familiar
Trust the wisdom you’ve gained as a result of your personal learning
Oh, and most importantly,  enjoy the journey!