Looking back over my life, if I had to boil it down to one theme, it would be trust. Most of the ‘lessons’ in my life are around control. The patterns of my emotional reactions tend to be around searching for or clinging to feeling safe and secure. Another way to say this is when I feel out of control, I seek safety and security. I realized over a decade ago that when I focus on building trust, instead of control, the safety and security I crave seems to flow naturally. When I fall into patterns of control, the sense of safety and security is fleeting at best. Instead, it ends up spinning me into anxiety, which definitely isn’t the outcome I’m looking for!
CONTROL AND CHANGE
One of the places I first identified this pattern was in times of transition and change. Whether planned or spontaneous, change easily threw my control-seeking, anxious mind into a feeling of being ‘out-of-control’. This created a belief within me that change was a battlefield, something to fight or avoid. I needed to be as prepared as possible in order to feel in control and keep anxiety at bay.
For changes and transitions that I knew were happening, I became a master planner. My mind loves to plan. It soothed anxious reactions because by ‘doing’ something, I felt in control rather than helpless in the uncertainty of the future.
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Some of the ‘policies’ I developed to fight or avoid the anxiety I felt around change were:
- Plan for worst-case scenarios.
- When in doubt, make a list..
- Plan now, relax later.
- Don’t just think about it, make it happen.
- When you find a way that works, stick to it.
I don’t want to place these policies in a ‘bad’ category because planning, in the long run, created stress and anxiety for me. Making plans is a necessary part of life. Each of these ‘policies’ has morsels of helpful advice. The issue for me was how much I clung to these policies as ‘truths’ versus discerning when they were helpful and when to let go of them.
PLANNING A ROAD TRIP
I’m laughing right now as I think of my friend, Lauren, who did a road trip with me after we graduated from college up to Alaska, where I grew up. Once we had agreed to make it happen. I asked her, “So…do you have any thoughts about what you want to do?”
She replied, “Hmmm, not yet…what about you?”
I proceeded to hand her the Alaskan-Canadian Milepost Guide book that had a massive amount of resources in it and then shared my ‘tentative’ itinerary. To have a little fun with it, I proposed naming our adventure the ‘Archeological Arctic Expedition’, making t-shirts to hand out, and collecting ‘specimens’ from our trip.
I’m pretty sure she started laughing at the details of ‘my thoughts’ about the road trip and said, “Sure! I’m in.”
My elaborate planning was a way to find control and avoid anxious uncertainty in the MAJOR life transition about to happen – graduating from college. I was completely unsure what the heck I was going to do next, so throwing myself into a detailed plan for a road trip was a great way to avoid facing the inevitable. What was I going to do with a BA in Psychology?!
CHARACTERISTICS OF CHANGE
In my exploration of change over the years as a mental health professional and personally, I found that change has some characteristics:
- There’s an ending and a beginning.
- It’s a time of loss and letting go, i.e. grief.
- It’s an opportunity for new possibilities.
- Pain is a part of change.
- It can’t be stopped.
Our perception of change influences our relationship with it.
My relationship with change shifted when I realized that no matter how often I moved, where in the world I lived, or what I was doing…I was still there. I was the constant. If I wanted to truly find ‘control’ in the pain of change, I needed to change my tactics and face myself. I had reached a point where I was tired of moving, unhappy with how I was treating the person I loved, and I just wanted to find peace. The way I had been doing it just wasn’t working.
I wanted to figure out a different way of going through change that was more calm, matter-of-fact, and enjoyable.
The perception shift I was introduced to was the philosophy of Yoga.
YOGA AND CHANGE
My top 3 Yoga Perception Shifts with change are:
- Everything That Can Change, Will Change
- How You View Change Makes It The Enemy Or An Ally
- Focus On Your Reaction To Change
In the 13 years I’ve been practicing these perception shifts, change has gone from something I thought I needed to control in order to feel safe and secure…
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To accept that change is a catalyst that leads me to trusting myself and my place in this world. That is why, my life has been not a theme of control, but rather, a theme of finding my way into trust. When I am in that space of trust, safety and security show up without any effort on my part.
And those ‘policies’ for change I mentioned above, have transformed into:
- Trust I am capable of meeting whatever life brings.
- Lists support my mind to focus on what matters.
- Cultivate relaxed planning.
- Take action on what is necessary and let go of the rest.
- Play with stability and mobility in times of change.
What is your relationship with change?
Within that relationship, what do you want to keep and what do you want to let go of?
The more we understand this relationship, the more change can become your ally.
Shanti.
P.S. If my top 3 Yoga Perception Shifts with change resonate with you, I invite you to join myself and Carly Brown, as we explore these concepts in our online workshop November 9th at 5:30pm MST – FIND BALANCE IN TIMES OF CHANGE: An Exploration Through A Yogic Lens. Find the details and registration here.