Try A Different View

As we enjoy the colors of spring (despite the wild temperature swings), a friend was lamenting the return of a persistent cold that she thought she had beat.

Her throat was scratchy, her nose dripped and she maintained a dull ached above her eyes. All of her favor cold remedies were failing her.

I sympathized with her discomfort, since I was suffering with my reaction to the record levels of pollen floating through the air. I have had spring time allergies all of my life, and living in the Washington area only has made them worse.

"My eye are so irritated," I told her, "that I wish I could take them out of my head and rinse them off."

"Really?" she said. "That's exactly how my eyes feel! I never even considered allergies!"

Long story short -- my friend went over the her pharmacy, loaded up on antihistamines and eye drops, and found relief.

Sometimes it's just a word, a quick view from another perspective, that offers a solution.

Enjoy the spring, and don't be allergic to change.

One Day At A Time

If you or someone close to you has experience with 12-step programs, you know the significance and the philosophy of the phrase "One Day At A Time."

In a nutshell, it says that every day offers the chance for a fresh start.

A friend of mine who has achieved a long period of recovery from a substance abuse problem told me that he does not believe in New Year's resolutions. He says that the time to affect change is the moment that you see the need.

That sounds a little harsh to me. The distance between recognizing the need for change and its institution can be pretty broad. It can look like a canyon even if, in reality, change simply is a step in a different direction.

But I do get my friend's belief that change doesn't require a special day. Heck, look at some of the unwelcomed changes we all have to bear. They come without announcement and we still adjust to them. Maybe not the best adjustment, but adjustment nonetheless.

We don't have the choice. Change happens, and we have to deal with it.

What about the changes that you'd like to make in your life? The changes that you get to choose?

I mean, you've already been thinking about it. The process has begun.

Today seems like a perfect day to start your change.

"I Don't Know"

A friend is in the midst of career transition (I know, get in line). She’s clear about what she does not want to do anymore; about how her work has sucked the joy out of her life and left her among the walking dead.

She tells me about dreams she's had of being in a lovely garden, then realizing that vines within the garden have begun to wrap themselves around her feet and ankles, slowly winding their way up her legs and preventing her from moving.

Well! Can’t get much clearer than that!

However, when asked what she wants to do next, **crickets.**

To break down the question, I asked about her passions.

“I don’t know,” she said, exasperated. “I can’t come up with an answer! What the hell does THAT mean?”

I’m not saying that I know what it means. Sometimes, “I don’t know” means just that: “I don’t know.”

In my experience, “I don’t know” usually is code for “I don’t want to think about this, because if I do, it may mean that I have to choose a course of action or change, and change is scary because I might make the wrong decision, and I don’t know if I can survive that.”

Whew.

In other words, “I don’t know” can be an acknowledgement of fear. And fear rarely provides a good basis for decision making.

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.