Challenging Fears

Posted on by stilllearning2b

I’m the in clarity-seeking and courage-building phase of a major life change. And like any change, it’s scary. Especially in that wind-up to the actual leap.

I’m very aware that I need to manage this anxiety around the transition, otherwise it will keep be stuck in the same place that is sending me clear signals that’s time for change. But it’s time to replace words with actions. To stop making empty promises to myself and start making decisions.

And it all starts by confronting my fears.

My fears are lying to me, telling me the following –

It’s not that bad.

I can’t do anything differently.

The transition will be hard.

What if I make the wrong decision?

I’ll go broke.

I’m failing by quitting.

You won’t be successful.

It’s almost as though my fears earn a commission based off how well they can keep me frozen in place.

Now, I KNOW these are lies. But sometimes I struggle to believe it.

So today, I sat down with a journal selected solely for this transition and challenged each fear in turn-

1 – What is the fear telling me?

2 – What is the worst-case scenario in relation to this fear?

3 – If the worst-case happened, what agency would I still have?

4 – What evidence do I have to refute the claims that this fear is making?

5 – When have I faced a similar fear in the past and what was the result?

Wow. This was powerful stuff. First, simply writing out each fear and exposing it to the light of day helped to reduce some of its power. Exploring what decisions I could make if the worst happened gave me some sense of control and comfort that I would be okay. Counteracting each fear with evidence had the effect of distinguishing between a bark and a bite. And finally, reflecting on how I’ve successfully faced my fears (and worst-case becoming real) in my past helped to build my confidence.

I got this.

And for those of you facing a similar challenge, you got this too!

 

 

When All You See is the Path, You Lose the Destination

Posted on by stilllearning2b

I took my second jiu jitsu class today. For the most part, the language of the mat is as unfamiliar to me as Latvian was last month. But every so often, a phrase will reach my ears that makes perfect sense.

At the end of class, my husband has everybody circle up and share one thing they did well in class that day.

(As an aside, how awesome is that? Jiu jitsu is one of those sports where you spend years getting your ass handed to you over and over again. It’s easy for people to leave a class feeling defeated. This one simple ritual helps overcome that negativity spiral. And this is an easy habit that we can ALL do at the end of every day.)

One relatively new student shared about how he’s starting to understand how moves link together and the importantance of not becoming too wedded to a particular attack.

I immediately nodded in understanding, as this was a lesson I learned many years ago in fencing. When you become too committed to one particular move, you become frustrated and easily stuck if that move is thwarted. You become more focused on the specific path than on the desired overall outcome.

My husband described it this way –

 

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The picture on the top is what happens when you become too committed to a particular attack. You develop tunnel vision and you no longer are able to see the other possibilities.

The bottom picture shows a better approach. Know what you’re going for, but also be aware of everything around it. And don’t be afraid to change your approach.

Good stuff, that.

On my afternoon run, I got to thinking about how this same idea applies to life. It’s so easy to get overly focused on how we’re going to reach our goals (a specific partner, a particular job, a desired number of children, an anticipated income), that if those are taken away from us, we feel frustrated and stuck. We become so wedded to those particular things that we cannot see another option.

I went through a little thought exercise on my run. I’d like to share it with you and have you try it too.

 

First, I want you to think of your major life goals/values/driving principles.

Nope, those are too specific. Try again. To help keep them broad, limit yourself to two.

Here’s mine –

  1. I want to leave my little campsite that I’m occupying for my time on earth just a little better than I found it.
  2. I want to live a life that is driven by love not fear.

 

Next, think about what you’re doing in your life right now that helps to meet that goal.

Again, I’ll share some of mine with you –

Goal 1

  • As a teacher, I’m using some of the deficits in my own math instruction to help me reach more students in a meaningful way.
  • After feeling so alone during divorce, I’m working to use my experience to help others that are going through similar.

Goal 2

  • I continually find ways to persevere despite my anxiety about a situation. This could be anything from going down a hill (seriously. I know.) to initiating a difficult conversation with my husband.
  • In the classroom, I choose to handle classroom management through relationship building rather than punitive discipline, which is often motivated by a fear of the kids gaining the upper hand.

 

Lastly, brainstorm some other ways that you could also work towards that same goal that you do NOT currently have in your life.

Here are just a few of mine for goal 1. This is brainstorming, so they run the gamut –

  • volunteer in my community
  • win the lottery and donate a significant sum to a charity
  • pick up trash that I encounter on the trail or the river
  • make an effort to make everyone I speak to feel valued and important
  • go camping and leave behind a “welcome” note with a little firewood for the next guests
  • use my teaching skills to train people in a particular skill so that they can find employment

 

It’s amazingly freeing to step back sometimes and truly see how many possibilities there really are. Even if I lost my job tomorrow, never wrote another blog post and ended up divorced and broke again, I could still find ways to move towards that life goal. (Note to the universe – this is NOT a challenge!)

And that’s a pretty awesome realization.

Even when you lose one approach, you’re not out.

It just means it’s time to try something else.

 

 

How Will Your Divorce Change You?

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Have you ever placed a plant in a window and neglected to turn it for a period of time? If so, you’re familiar with that asymmetrical appearance that occurs as the plant resolutely grows towards the light. In plants, this behavior is called phototropism, one of many innate growth mechanisms that dictate how the plant changes in response to its environment.

We aren’t as beholden to the sun, but we have our own tropism that determines our growth:

Credotropism – growth towards belief

Just like the sun directs the shape of the plant, your beliefs govern the shape your life takes. Especially after something as difficult as divorce.

In a series of studies, teachers were given false information about a class of average students. When the teachers were informed that the students were of below average intelligence, the students performed poorly. When told that the students were brilliant, the same students scored high marks.

The teacher’s belief guided the growth of their students.

Just imagine what your own beliefs are doing for you.

Do you want to find a way to feel better? Live better? Be better?

It all starts with your attitude.

Are you looking at your divorce as the worst thing to ever happen to you? Are you fixating on your ex and what they did to the family? Are you focusing on what you have lost?

I get it. I did it too. It’s all but impossible to not spend some time in that negative mental space. After all, you’re mourning the loss not only of what was but also of your imagined future. You may be dealing with limited exposure to your children, a loss of financial security or the brutal reality that you have apparently been replaced.

And you can certainly stay in that negative headspace, building your beliefs about your life’s derailment and its associated casualties.

Yet in doing so, you will most certainly continue to steer your life into that dark tunnel.

Credotropism. You grow towards your beliefs.

It’s true that your hands are somewhat tied right now. You can’t simply turn back time and restart a path where the divorce never happened. You can’t pretend that the negative effects aren’t real and live as though this never occurred.

And you can’t snap your fingers and suddenly find yourself moved on (I know, I tried).

But you can start by believing that it is possible.

You don’t need to know how you’re going to rebuild your financial security to believe that it is possible.

You don’t need to how your children are going to be okay in order to have confidence that it will transpire.

You don’t have to know how you’re going to find love again to believe that it can happen.

You don’t need to know how you’re going to be happy and fulfilled to trust that it can occur.

It all starts with your attitude. Your conviction that you can.

Because you will grow towards whatever you believe.

Make it worthwhile.

Growing Apart in Marriage

Posted on by stilllearning2b
growing apart

We were inseparable for the better part of ten years.

We met at the age of four at a Mother’s Day Out group at our church. I remember being drawn to her pigtails, her white-blond cornsilk hair reminded me of one of my dolls and stood in contrast to my much wilder and darker mane. By the time we were in first grade, we had graduated to official “best friend” status, proudly advertised on our silver James Avery half-heart charms worn on matching chains around our necks.

We did everything together. Completed each other’s sentences and knew the other’s every wish. The other kids seemed to understand that we were a package deal – make one friend and get another one free. Our friendship navigated the transition to middle school where afternoons spent catching toads were replaced with evenings endlessly dissecting interactions with the boys. Even as we took our first shaky steps into relationships with the opposite sex, we would always return to each other to seek advice and approval.

But then high school happened and those small differences that has always existed between us were suddenly magnified. My preference for Metallica drew me towards an older crowd and her love of the stage pulled her into theater. Our classes, which had rarely ever been together, were suddenly on opposite halls and our lockers were assigned in different buildings. Over the span of a semester, we went from being inseparable to being casual friends who largely moved in separate circles.

There was some sadness. I would see her under the lights on stage, those cornsilk pigtails now released into a shining wave down her back, and remember how familiar she once was to me. There were moments when I would see her name in its first-place position on my speed dial and would mourn for the connection that we shared.

Yet even with the pinch of grief that would tag along with my memories, I understood that this transition was natural.

We had simply grown apart.

Our interests, our goals and eventually, our experiences, meant that we no longer occupied the same space. And even though it was sad, it was okay. We each had our own path to take and we could remember with fondness those years when our paths converged.

Why is it that we treat marriage so differently than other relationships? We acknowledge that friendships grow and recede, changing over time, yet we fear our marriages being anything but static, constant. When we sense that our partners are growing away from us and we catch a glimpse of diverging paths, we respond with panic or a quiet denial instead of acceptance.

We accuse them of no longer being the person that we married, beg them to stay the same as they were. We project our own discomfort with change onto their shoulders, penalizing them for wanting to change direction.

It’s sad when two people who were once so compatible begin to grow in opposite directions. It’s painful to be presented with the choice of following your heart and moving in a new direction or silencing your heart in order to preserve a relationship. You may secretly crave a reason to end the relationship, struggling to acknowledge that it has outlived its usefulness when there is nothing identifiably wrong with it.

You fear breaking hearts, yet your heart is breaking every time you feel like you have to make a choice between your partner and your purpose.

There are no easy choices when a couple has grown apart. Choose to stay and you and your partner risk feeling diminished and stifled. Attempt to renegotiate the marriage and you may find that the terms are not agreeable or that they are not sufficient to mitigate the growing distance. Walk away and you invite loneliness and regret even as you move towards your light.

This is not to say that marriage should be discarded as easily as a shirt once fashion changes. There is a commitment. A promise. Ideally, core values and goals are still in alignment and individual growth can occur within the supportive structure of the marriage.

But that is not always possible. The couple that met through faith and always held religion as the cornerstone of their union will be rocked if one partner disavows their church. Or, if two people came together with the express wish of starting a family and one later decides to remain childless, the bedrock has been fractured. You can fight the situation, but your protests will only go so far.

I often learn about acceptance through nature. My backyard is comprised of a small oval of grass surrounded by trees and shrubs. Most of them happily grow together towards the sun, leaning against each other for support and generously sharing the sunnier spaces. Or, they renegotiate, sharing the same soil yet bending their stems in different directions in order to both have their needs met.

Some become bullies, so concerned about their own needs that they shade out those around them. Others allow themselves to be shaded, giving up their own potential for growth with barely a whimper. I rarely intervene, but when I see a plant failing to reach its potential because of its location, I feel obligated to step in and either move the limbs that are blocking the light or replant the stifled one in a more favorable location. I don’t brand this intervention as “failure,” it doesn’t indicate a problem with the individual plantings. It’s simply something that needs to happen for growth to continue.

Yet marriage is more important than a bunch of flowers looking for their own stream of sunlight. We build lives together, share dreams and fears as we layer years of shared experiences. There is a vision of a shared future, moving forward along the same trajectory that was envisioned from the beginning.

And yet…

Change is inevitable. And sometimes endings are as well. There are times when the kindest action is to honor when your paths converged and allow them to continue along their own course.

 

Are You In Love With the Person or With Their Potential?

Posted on by stilllearning2b
potential

I was lucky.

The decision to file for divorce was a no-brainer for me. At that point, my husband was MIA, had committed bigamy and had used all of my money (and credit) to fund his other life.

Many of you do not or did not have that decision present itself in such a clear-cut manner.

And I feel for you.

I used to play a little thought exercise where I would consider how I would have responded to finding out about my ex’s actions at some point along his pathway to destruction. When I’m honest with myself, I probably would have been way too forgiving and lenient with his behavior.

Not because I would have been okay with what he was doing, but because I believed in him. After reaching the understanding that he needed help, I would have held onto the hope that he would have accepted it. I know that I would have grasped onto any glimpse of the man I knew and loved and made excuses for actions that didn’t align.

I’m afraid that I would have stayed too long and endured way too much. Confusing a love of his potential for a love of the person. Setting hard boundaries would have felt too much like giving up on him, and that thought would have been devastating.

I currently teach accelerated math students. That means they all have the ability to be in my class and they had to demonstrate that in order to register. But one of the first – and often hardest- lessons they have to learn in my class is that it doesn’t matter what you can do. It only matters what you do.

Most of them learn the lesson. I love to watch them grow and mature over the year as they slowly take on more responsibility for their learning. Others struggle to put their potential into practice. And at some point, I, along with their parents, have to decide if this is the right place for them at this point in time.

It’s given me an interesting perspective on potential. After all, I’m evaluating it on an almost constant basis and with a large number of people. And from what I’ve learned watching them, I would now handle a situation like the imagined one with my ex very differently.

We often face these situations – with our children, our employees and our spouses. We can easily get so caught up in the frustrations of the “shoulds” and the deflection of the fears that we have trouble seeing the situation clearly.

If you’re facing a tough decision about somebody and you’re trying to balance their potential with the current reality, try asking yourself these questions:

Do they believe in their potential? Does it look the same as what I envision?

Are they motivated by different goals that are currently more important to them?

How far away are they from what I perceive as their potential?

Are they motivated to work towards their potential? Do they care about the impact on me? 

Are they making progress towards their potential?

What sort of timeline am I looking at for them to reach their potential? Am I willing to give it that much time?

What will the growth process entail? Am I willing to put the work in too?

Am I realistic about their potential or am I asking them to be somebody they’re not?

Do I believe that I have the power to make them change?

Am I lowering the benchmark or my boundaries in order to avoid making a decision? 

Am I constantly excusing their behavior?

Am I setting appropriate boundaries so that their choices have limited impact on me?

Am I holding onto my hope that they can change out of a fear of confrontation or of letting go?

Am I allowing their actions to consistently compromise my own well-being?

Am I okay if they never change?

It is so hard when we see what somebody can be. We can be so distracted by the possibility that we ignore the reality. Or, we can become fixated on the idea that if we just motivated them the right way, said the right thing, that they would change their ways.

Yet their journey is different than yours.

They may change and grow. But not on your timeline. On theirs. And not to your goals. But to theirs. When we only see people from what we perceive as their potential, we are not truly allowing them to be themselves. Rather, we are trying to push our own ideals, beliefs and needs upon them.

Here’s the reality –

You cannot change them. You cannot ignore their current state forever. You cannot manifest their perfect potential. You cannot decide what is important to them. You cannot make them revert to the way they were or become what they said they wanted.

All you can do is try to gain a clearer picture of the situation and make the best decision you can.

For them.

And for you.