Just how bad does the emotional/psychological/social ‘pain’ need to get before we decide enough is enough, and that transformation is required? How come we are able to endure deep inner discomfort, anxiety or pain for so long it becomes so much a ‘part’ of us that we own it. How come continuing to endure this deep inner discomfort perceived less risky, and easier, preferable to the discomfort/challenge of changing, letting it go and discovering what’s possible for us the other side?
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
Anais Nin
A Call to Change
I love this quote. It encapsulates the energy which decides for something new, triggers transformation, a new learning process: an odyssey towards more joy.
‘Better the devil you know..” keeps us in our comfort zone. A zone which over years becomes smaller and smaller, more and more limiting: slowly but surely eroding any sense of confidence and security we may once have had.
The phrase ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ relevant for our inner world as we become more and more familiar with the same old limiting way of feeling unresourceful in some way so contempt for self emerges in subtle ways.
What has to happen to our thoughts, feelings or beliefs about ourselves to bring us to a point of realisation that it really cannot get worse? I believe it is a deep internal sense of knowing that there’s something better waiting for us, something innate that yearns for transformation... Something intangible. A sense of something, no matter how infinitesimally tiny, fluttering its wings on the edge of our awareness knocking on the window of our soul whispering that we are more than we have become, that there is something greater in us than we currently know and if only we stepped towards it we would feel the expansion of our most possible self.
So what do we do?
The nature of changing ourselves generally starts with the perception that ‘something’ needs to change. Usually that 'something' is perceived as outside of ourselves.... A person: our partner; our relationship; job; home; weight; or hairstyle. So we change this external thing in the hope it will make us feel better. And for a while, we sometimes we do feel better, firstly because taking active steps to improve our world gives us a sense of empowerment and inner resourcefulness, and secondly, because something in our environment has changed and so we have to change how we interact with that new something. So we fall into a relatively harmonious relationship with ourselves in our world.
But then slowly... And gradually... That sense of inner dissatisfaction or pain lets itself be known again. So we again, we change something external. And all is good for a while until it comes back again... And each time it comes back it gets stronger and stronger, more intense and infinitely more acute with each cycle until...
We realise the common denominator is ... ourselves.
You'd think this would free us from the cycle. But no! Hopeful fools we are who think that if we continue doing the same thing something else will change. That miraculously all will be well. Some people never move from this way of being. They live in denial or victim states always blaming others, or karma, or their stars.
Some take this realisation as a gift, that we are the source of all that we experience. That we can burst into the fullness of our possibility when we choose transformation, to grow new thinking about who we are and what we are capable of in the world. When we realise that we create our sense of reality by the way we look at the world, the way we interpret our capacity and quality, we give ourselves the opportunity to empower ourselves and free ourselves from negative unresourceful states and beliefs.
Of course, we can get stuck in a lack of faith in our ability to effect transformation. Often by the stage we realise it’s ourselves we need to change, our experience of life is so mired in feeling bad that we believe ourselves to lack the inner resourcefulness required to change. This is where we apply willingness towards willfully generating new thought patterns, consciously applying effort to creating and generating something new for us.
The Tipping (budding) Point
And we leap... if only because we know that we are meant to, and we can be more than we currently feel we are.
We leap into the unknown. Into something we don't know... And it is scary. To give up all that we’ve identified with in favour of our undiscovered and untested quality… What if it's just the same? If it's worse than what we left behind? What if I am just not good enough to make things better? Even the fear of this becomes less than the risk of what we’d experience if we remained the same. So we know. We know that no matter what it brings, must be less painful than staying where we are.
The one thing I’ve recognised in the grace of working with all the clients I’ve worked with…. There is nothing more incredible to behold, than witnessing someone realise they are more than they thought they were. The more resources and qualities they risked discovering, the more they discovered.
As human beings we are blessed with an unbelievable abundance of inner resources that we apply to our daily life to get things done and which automatically kick in when we need to learn new things without even thinking about it. The wonder of realising ‘I can’ generates so much so quickly that ‘I can’t’ pales into insignificance in the glory of the glorious blossoming of a human being.
Embrace your glory – go on – I dare you. Go ahead. BLOSSOM!