Change up

What is difficult for me about sitting with the process of change?

At the halfway point, 2008 clearly is a year of major change and transition. I write this as the US stock markets resemble a theme park ride. The American political landscape is shifting drastically around us. Gas, housing and grocery prices change so fast that folks are being forced to recalculate their budget decisions on a weekly basis.

Personally, my life has been in transition for years; the kind of transitions that smack you upside the head. The deaths of loved ones; illness; sudden professional moves; family shifts. Obviously, all of our lives are in constant transition; it’s just the more jarring ones that get our notice. You can't avoid awareness of the major transitions (even if you wish you could).

But whether it’s transition writ large or transition writ small, there still is a process and an awareness required to move forward with intention and purpose. There are ways to move with transition, instead of feeling helpless about the changes that are happening to you.

I was working out with my trainer (which, by the way, is a powerful way to manage change and the stress it can bring). He is consistent in his preference to use a variety of methods to achieve basic goals. The specific exercises may vary, but the goals are the same: to built core strength through the abdominal muscles and to build flexibility and strength in the upper and lower muscles of the body. He alternates pushing motions with pulling motions – when to exert strength and when to resist -- with varied amounts of weight.

To balance the effort demanded from various muscle groups, my trainer had me shift free weights from one hand to the other while repeating a motion with another muscle group. Type A personality that I am, I worked to maintain the correct form while striving to quickly master a speedy transfer of weight from one side to the other. That is where he stopped me.

“Take your time,” he said. “You have to slow down to recognize the speed of the transition in front of you. Think of it like the exchange of a baton: the lead off runner has to assess the speed required for the next transition in order to achieve a smooth hand off. You can’t stay at the same speed and shift successfully.”

I think I’m like a lot of people who buy into the idea of seamless change. We like the idea of moving effortlessly from one phase to another without the need for introspection or evaluation. No room for learning. And why should it be necessary? Aren’t we often tasked to take on multiple changes, transitions or crises at the same time? Who has time to slow down when everything is being dumped on you at once?

Yet, here I am at the opposite end of that continuum. Everything has seemed to slow down, and I haven’t a clue of what coming at me. The anticipation is excruciating. How can I prepare if I don’t have a clue of what’s ahead?

And yet, maybe that’s precisely the learning. None of us really knows what’s ahead. What we do know for sure is that change is constant, and that it’s always around the bend. So maybe the best any of us can do is strengthen our core, work on our flexibility and try to measure the speed of the transition in front of us. That way, when we can see the approaching change more clearly, we’ll have the flexibility and strength we need to move in the direction we need to go.