Letting go...change...growing up...loss....these can all be very difficult, especially for someone who feels more secure when things are stable. Sometimes, even when the better path is clear, it's hard to make the choice to let go of what you have right now, change the norms that you have gotten used to, and choose the path that leads to more growth, health, and maturity. And, it can be hard to stay committed to that change.
Let me give you an example.
The year was 1985 and I was about 2 years old. I was not, shall we say, the most independent child in the world. I was colicy from the get go, clingy in general, and definitely change-averse. Sounds like the perfect kid, right? :) Predictably, I was quite attached to my pacifier. I had reached the age where it was no longer appropriate or necessary to have a pacifier, but I still clung onto it for dear life. Cultural norms, orthodontic health, psychological maturity, and I'm sure other factors too were all hanging in the balance. But how do you rationalize with a 2 year old to make her understand that she should make the choice to give up the comfort and pleasure of her pacifier so that she doesn't become a maladjusted 10 year old outcast with crooked teeth? That's nearly impossible. Now I don't know all the details of the story, but I imagine that my parents were hesitant about the repercussions of taking my pacifier away but were biding their time and trying to find a way to do it as peacefully as possible. That situation conveniently presented itself. One day while playing outside, my pacifier happened to fall into a pile of dog poop. Even a 2 year old knows that a dog-poop-covered pacifier should not go in your mouth, so my mom jumped on this opportunity. For the following days, whenever I would ask for my pacifier, my mom would say, "Oh Sarah, remember? It fell in dog poop! It's yucky!!" And I would sadly reply, "...yucky..." with my 2 year old resignation to the hard facts of life. And using this dog poop methodology, I was successfully ridden of my pacifier habit.
Change is hard because it involves losing something (a person, place, thing, or idea). And that loss is hard because you usually still have a desire for the thing that is lost.
Even though I was only two years old at the time, I was learning a couple of great principles. First, I learned that when the desire arises in you for whatever is lost, you don't have to deny that desire. You are free to feel that desire and talk about it and own it. You can feel sad that you can't fulfill the desire for that thing anymore. Second, I found out that having a reason to hold onto for the loss can help you move on. When I felt sad about not having the comfort of my pacifier, I was able to reframe my thinking by realizing why another part of me didn't want my pacifier (it was yucky now) and reminding myself of what my present reality was instead of dwelling on the past.
Those two points go together well, don't they? First, instead of denying that you're sad, you let yourself feel it. Then, in response to the sad feelings, you help yourself accept reality instead of wishing for something else.
To me, the best tool in this all though is the idea of having a "reason." When I was 2, my reason for moving on fit my cognitive abilities. I couldn't understand that it really was best for me to let myself grow up, I just knew I didn't want to experience change. But what I could understand was the concept of something being yucky, and I knew I didn't want that. Having a reason to give up my pacifier, even if it was only a surface reason and not the real, deeper reason, was enough for me to deal with my thoughts and emotions surrounding the change.
Now fast forward about 30 years. I've been realizing that the same is still true in my life. When change happens, it's so very easy for me to get overwhelming feelings of desire to go back to how it was and feel sad about it. But now I am in my 30s and now I can look at the deeper and true reasons for change. And some of those hard changes were even chosen *by* me for reasons that I need to remember. When my mind starts to go to the place of sadness because of change, I can stop and acknowledge those feelings and desires and then remind myself *why* I either can't or don't want to fulfill the desire for that lost thing anymore.
- If I start missing/feeling nostalgic for the place I used to live, I remind myself of the reason why I moved and what I wanted to get away from and why I like what I have now.
- If I start missing a person, I remind myself why I chose to stop hanging around them, what I chose to be more important, or what I wanted to avoid.
- When I'm stressed out by the loss of my old job & the start of a new job, I remind myself why I wanted a change.
- It even works for food! If I feel a little sad about not being able to eat something with gluten in it, I remind myself of the reason why I don't eat it and how I'd rather feel.
- Or, if the change wasn't totally my choice, I might think about the reasons why the change is good or healthy or necessary. (I'm not sure that I'm the greatest at being intentional about this one :))
Not only does reminding myself of the reason why the change happened help me cope in the moment, it also gives me a more realistic view on things. Nostalgia is, according to (my hero) Brene Brown, "a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed." If I just fondly remember the past before the change and fail to remember why I made the change in the first place, I think I'm more likely to want to slide on back to where I came from. But if I stop and look objectively at it all, even in my moment of sadness, then I realize that there were good things and not so great things about the time before the change, and that the not so great things were big enough to cause me to choose change. And that might make me want to keep with it.
And that's why having that reason to cling to is so important, I think. Emotions are tricky things. They can overtake you. But, if those emotions start to rise and the desire to go back to the way things were starts to flare up, having that one reason right at your fingertips might just be enough to bring you out of your pure emotions and into your thinking brain. I might drive past my old apartment and think "wah, I had so many memories there and it felt like home" and feel sad. But if then I stop for a moment and think, "Oh yeah, it was really noisy, and I didn't have a dishwasher," that might be enough for me to realize that I made the choice I wanted to make. I can still miss it and think fondly about my time there, but I can also think positively about my change.
I'm realizing that sometimes I remind myself of my reason for change intuitively - my brain just does the healthy thing on its own. But, sometimes it's harder. Sometimes the change is more difficult or really sad and it's easier to get carried away in emotions. It's in those times that I need to be careful to intentionally remind myself of what is really important to me, and see how the change is connected to that. I think that's the way it will stick.
So go find your reason. I hope it is more meaningful than a pile of poop :)
Let me give you an example.
The year was 1985 and I was about 2 years old. I was not, shall we say, the most independent child in the world. I was colicy from the get go, clingy in general, and definitely change-averse. Sounds like the perfect kid, right? :) Predictably, I was quite attached to my pacifier. I had reached the age where it was no longer appropriate or necessary to have a pacifier, but I still clung onto it for dear life. Cultural norms, orthodontic health, psychological maturity, and I'm sure other factors too were all hanging in the balance. But how do you rationalize with a 2 year old to make her understand that she should make the choice to give up the comfort and pleasure of her pacifier so that she doesn't become a maladjusted 10 year old outcast with crooked teeth? That's nearly impossible. Now I don't know all the details of the story, but I imagine that my parents were hesitant about the repercussions of taking my pacifier away but were biding their time and trying to find a way to do it as peacefully as possible. That situation conveniently presented itself. One day while playing outside, my pacifier happened to fall into a pile of dog poop. Even a 2 year old knows that a dog-poop-covered pacifier should not go in your mouth, so my mom jumped on this opportunity. For the following days, whenever I would ask for my pacifier, my mom would say, "Oh Sarah, remember? It fell in dog poop! It's yucky!!" And I would sadly reply, "...yucky..." with my 2 year old resignation to the hard facts of life. And using this dog poop methodology, I was successfully ridden of my pacifier habit.
Change is hard because it involves losing something (a person, place, thing, or idea). And that loss is hard because you usually still have a desire for the thing that is lost.
Even though I was only two years old at the time, I was learning a couple of great principles. First, I learned that when the desire arises in you for whatever is lost, you don't have to deny that desire. You are free to feel that desire and talk about it and own it. You can feel sad that you can't fulfill the desire for that thing anymore. Second, I found out that having a reason to hold onto for the loss can help you move on. When I felt sad about not having the comfort of my pacifier, I was able to reframe my thinking by realizing why another part of me didn't want my pacifier (it was yucky now) and reminding myself of what my present reality was instead of dwelling on the past.
Those two points go together well, don't they? First, instead of denying that you're sad, you let yourself feel it. Then, in response to the sad feelings, you help yourself accept reality instead of wishing for something else.
To me, the best tool in this all though is the idea of having a "reason." When I was 2, my reason for moving on fit my cognitive abilities. I couldn't understand that it really was best for me to let myself grow up, I just knew I didn't want to experience change. But what I could understand was the concept of something being yucky, and I knew I didn't want that. Having a reason to give up my pacifier, even if it was only a surface reason and not the real, deeper reason, was enough for me to deal with my thoughts and emotions surrounding the change.
Now fast forward about 30 years. I've been realizing that the same is still true in my life. When change happens, it's so very easy for me to get overwhelming feelings of desire to go back to how it was and feel sad about it. But now I am in my 30s and now I can look at the deeper and true reasons for change. And some of those hard changes were even chosen *by* me for reasons that I need to remember. When my mind starts to go to the place of sadness because of change, I can stop and acknowledge those feelings and desires and then remind myself *why* I either can't or don't want to fulfill the desire for that lost thing anymore.
- If I start missing/feeling nostalgic for the place I used to live, I remind myself of the reason why I moved and what I wanted to get away from and why I like what I have now.
- If I start missing a person, I remind myself why I chose to stop hanging around them, what I chose to be more important, or what I wanted to avoid.
- When I'm stressed out by the loss of my old job & the start of a new job, I remind myself why I wanted a change.
- It even works for food! If I feel a little sad about not being able to eat something with gluten in it, I remind myself of the reason why I don't eat it and how I'd rather feel.
- Or, if the change wasn't totally my choice, I might think about the reasons why the change is good or healthy or necessary. (I'm not sure that I'm the greatest at being intentional about this one :))
Not only does reminding myself of the reason why the change happened help me cope in the moment, it also gives me a more realistic view on things. Nostalgia is, according to (my hero) Brene Brown, "a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed." If I just fondly remember the past before the change and fail to remember why I made the change in the first place, I think I'm more likely to want to slide on back to where I came from. But if I stop and look objectively at it all, even in my moment of sadness, then I realize that there were good things and not so great things about the time before the change, and that the not so great things were big enough to cause me to choose change. And that might make me want to keep with it.
And that's why having that reason to cling to is so important, I think. Emotions are tricky things. They can overtake you. But, if those emotions start to rise and the desire to go back to the way things were starts to flare up, having that one reason right at your fingertips might just be enough to bring you out of your pure emotions and into your thinking brain. I might drive past my old apartment and think "wah, I had so many memories there and it felt like home" and feel sad. But if then I stop for a moment and think, "Oh yeah, it was really noisy, and I didn't have a dishwasher," that might be enough for me to realize that I made the choice I wanted to make. I can still miss it and think fondly about my time there, but I can also think positively about my change.
I'm realizing that sometimes I remind myself of my reason for change intuitively - my brain just does the healthy thing on its own. But, sometimes it's harder. Sometimes the change is more difficult or really sad and it's easier to get carried away in emotions. It's in those times that I need to be careful to intentionally remind myself of what is really important to me, and see how the change is connected to that. I think that's the way it will stick.
So go find your reason. I hope it is more meaningful than a pile of poop :)
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