. . .growth is optional. And nothing brings on change more than a move. I’ve given some thought to change in the last week that I’ve arrived on what might as well be another planet.
We spend our lives understanding that change is part of each day, and struggling to keep things exactly the same. We fall into a routine, we focus on the future, when things will be just as we arrange them. And we wander through our lives, ignoring the very thing that will help us become different: change.
I fell into the trap, too. I did not look forward to buying a car. A tight budget and no knowledge of cars made me feel inadequate. But a ticking clock on the rental gave me an incentive to learn about cars and choose one. It turns out that I made several big decisions that I absolutely would have refused to accept a week ago. What brought on the change? I forced myself (and it was hard) to take a different perspective on my old views. To see how the different perspective allowed a larger shift in ideas and values. And then I stepped into the unknown with what I had learned.
I came out the other side with a new (to me) car, and a lot of respect for the process of change. For the idea that growth and exploration can be stopped dead in its tracks by perfectionism, and that a little lightening up trumps dead serious every time.
The new car made me feel real gratitude, forced me to depend on strangers (something I’m not good at) and moving through a problem with resolve. I’m a good decision maker, but I kept remembering I know nothing about cars. OK, once I admitted that, I could move ahead.
Perhaps a good way to tackle change is to admit you won’t know how it will turn out and can’t control most of the outcome anyway. Then plunge ahead, doing your best in the time available.
In Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke has a wonderful insight,
“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach. See her work at QuinnCreative.com (c) Quinn McDonald, 2007, All rights reserved.
