Sometimes, the transition is chosen. You’re about to become a mother for the first time, head up a new department, or move to a white stucco dream house with an orange grove. Even then you feel the pulses of anxiety. You wonder if you’re capable or “worthy.” Dread whispers to you that love can be taken away. You clutch your one thin winning lottery ticket, and silently fear every shadow or breeze.
It’s natural to feel this way. All growth makes us feel helpless.
When life becomes uncomfortable, we are being invited to explore our own personal power and dormant capacities. We have the opportunity to turn scared into sacred and experience a universe of expansion instead of contraction. But it’s up to us. It’s a choice. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. But only if we consciously choose for it to be that way.
Will you side with your higher intelligence or will you side with your darker fears? Which part of you will create this next part of your life? It takes a life-changing relationship with yourself to create a life-changing life.
The author C. S. Lewis writes, “Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it.”
What inner voice do you listen to? Is it kind, encouraging, and wise? Does it advocate for your welfare? Does it sound like your hip older sister or your favorite therapist? A mirth-making sorcerer? An earnest lover of your potential? A fervent Jesus? Or a wise guide that calls you to your True Identity?
Or is it just so bored with your inadequacy? Punishing like an SS officer? Taunting you like the boys in the school yard who made you wet your pants? Who is your inner traveling companion on this trip around the globe? This isn’t about how you present yourself to the world. It’s how you view yourself when no one else is around. It’s the voice of your thoughts when you’re not listening to anyone else.
This adviser runs your life. This adviser is your life.
You’re listening to either your vitality or your weakness—love or fear. Everything you will ever see and think runs through this filter. The writer Anaïs Nin said, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Your perception is your reality.
Why would you listen to a voice inside you that shames you? You can spend this next part of your life cultivating and listening to a voice that calls your true name and guides you past every fear or limiting belief. It’s worth everything to develop an allegiance to your light.
I’ll give you an example from the early years of my career transition. When I left my law firm to write, I wanted to buy myself as much time as possible, so I moved into a postage-stamp-size studio apartment in the middle of the city to save money. While others were financially and socially climbing, I was sliding, downwardly mobile.
My upstairs neighbors seemed to be playing touch football at all hours or yodeling in Spanish, but only when they weren’t having wild parties or riots. You know, I’d tell myself, you’re just living one of those interesting, artsy “urban” lives. Then I’d get the glossy alumni magazine from Harvard and just the cover of it would make me cry. Everyone looked calm and established and proud. Not one of them looked as though they were lost on the journey of being themselves—or even had a blade of grass out of place on their lawns. They had lawns.
At that time in my life, I was still paying more attention to external circumstances than inner experience; hence, I felt like an amoeba on the totem pole of life achievement and success. I also firmly believed that if Harvard Law School could rescind degrees, they’d do a factory recall on mine pronto.
“When will I be established? When will I move on? When will I have what other people have?” I cried and gurgled these questions to my boyfriend. Mascara ran down my cheeks; I looked like a mash-up of a bad watercolor painting, a raccoon, and a drag queen. Thankfully, the boyfriend looked at me as though I were the goddess Athena. Sadly, he would meet other goddesses later, and send me into another pivotal transition in my life. But that was later.
“One day you’re going to feel very sentimental about all this,” he said. He had me look around the room and take it in—“the writer’s early years.” Never mind that “the writer” (that would be me) wasn’t that young, wasn’t living in a garret in Paris—and wasn’t even writing on a regular basis. Still, as I imagined a future of publishing a book, I looked upon this renegade nest more softly. I came to see the choice to downsize not as one of embarrassment and failure, but one of courage. I was a woman who was willing to stalk her dreams and potential at any cost.
“Will you side with your higher intelligence or will you side with your darker fears? Which part of you will create this next part of your life?”
It’s your choice how you hold your experience. And what you see now will often determine what you will see later. You get to decide how you tell your story—which often creates your story. This awareness is worth the price of the journey.
I did end up becoming a successful, published writer. It turned out to be true in “real life,” because I continued to see it as true in Real Life, the inner chambers of my being. It was a practice. It was a discipline. It was the choice to side with myself instead of against myself, every single day of every single year.
Believe me, there were days I didn’t get this right. I fizzled. My worries played Ping-Pong with each other in the tight ship cabin of my brain, drinking whiskey and trading mentally ill scenarios. But I always returned to the knowing-sense that I needed to befriend myself. I needed to parent myself. I needed to champion myself—hopefully for the rest of my life. I wanted to grow. And I knew that I would flourish more from love than from pain.
When my second book came out, I found myself in another transition. It was a new world and I wasn’t sure what to do. Some people thrive on the unknown. But I felt like I was handling explosives while tiptoeing on a tightrope and desperately trying to reach into my pockets to find instructions—or horse tranquilizers.
Yet I knew more this time. I knew that no matter what the alarmist in my brain screamed, this transition was not just about taking action. It was also about creating a safe space for myself. I knew that transition made me feel vulnerable. And in my vulnerability, I needed encouragement more than I needed a screaming inner maniac.
So, I swore in my journal: “I will bless myself. I will trust myself. I will tell myself, ‘You’re doing fine. You’re where you need to be right now. This confusion is not your identity. It’s only a mist between the worlds. You will grow dormant abilities, vision, and muscles.’” And this focus helped me focus.
It turns out that unlike what my inner critic railed, my own encouragement didn’t coddle me into becoming a pathetic sloth who would end up living on Purina Cat Chow or out of Dumpsters, desperate and unwashed, not to mention unpublished, though quite well versed in the rationalization of affirmations. No, indeed. Encouragement got me off my own back, off the couch, and pounding the distance with a quiet fire that wouldn’t quit. It was just easier to fight for myself when I wasn’t fighting with myself.
If you’re in transition right now, it’s a kind of an emotional checkpoint. It’s not just a time when the train got stuck in the tunnel, or the Universe dropped your call—all your calls—and suggested you try another carrier. It’s a time behind the scenes that sets the stage for what is to come.
When the illusion of a guaranteed result or situation falls away, you have the opportunity to expand. It’s time to discover who you are now or who you’ve always been deep in your core. This may require that you unconditionally accept yourself, even when you do not look like the image of yourself you prefer. You may need to shake loose of how you think things have to be in order to be okay. This is an initiation to uncommon freedom.
The ways of transition are training grounds of mysterious powers. You leave behind the protection and the hindrance of the familiar. Sometimes you are stripped of worldly comfor
ts, casual identities, and chances to just coast or make do. These times may bring you to raw knees.
You will not be comforted by platitudes. Or even “commonsense” strategies. You search for the unnameable truth and homecoming that only you can find. You may hunger now for a new influence or paradigm. This soul-searching may bring you to the self-help section of the bookstore, an expedition to Peru, the silence of the woods, a rabbi, or a woman in New Jersey who talks to angels but doesn’t take Discover cards. Your search will bring you to yourself.
Transition makes you question everything, which will give you real answers.
When conditions change and old assumptions fall away, you will seek and discover the truth in the quarry of your depths. Your depths will bring you to your heights, because when all the props are gone and you connect with your quiet soul intelligence, you find a strength and love that knows no limits. Sometimes it’s only limits that can teach us how unlimited we are.
As you cross a threshold, it’s your chance to decide who you are, instead of allowing the world to decide for you.
Once you really know the ardent love that inhabits you, the love you are here to give, the love that walks beside you, and the love that will bring you all the way, then there is no longer a transition. You’ve arrived. And the circumstances won’t matter a fig.
TURNING POINTS:
It’s Impossible to Create a Bad Life If You’re Good to Yourself
Will you side with your higher intelligence or will you side with your darker fears? Which part of you will create this next part of your life?
It takes a life-changing relationship with yourself to create a life-changing life.
You get to decide how you tell your story—which often creates your story.
I knew that transition made me feel vulnerable. And in my vulnerability, I needed encouragement more than I needed a screaming inner maniac.
The ways of transition are training grounds of mysterious powers. You leave behind the protection and the hindrance of the familiar.
When all the props are gone and you connect with your quiet soul intelligence, you find a strength and love that knows no limits.
Sometimes it’s only limits that can teach us how unlimited we are.
As you cross a threshold, it’s your chance to decide who you are, instead of allowing the world to decide for you.
Do Try This at Home: Jump-starts, Inquiries & Exercises
Some of these suggestions are just right for you. Others, not your cup of latte, or at least at this moment. Follow your gut. Feel free to adjust to your liking. Do what’s right for you rather than what’s written here.
Pick three Turning Points from this chapter. Write them out for yourself. Post them where you will see them. Meditate on them. Journal about them. Do a Freewriting exercise. (See page 252 for more about Freewriting.) Create a piece of art. Pay attention to your thoughts, memories, dreams, and “random” ideas and incidents. Inspired thoughts spark inspired responses. My words begin the conversation, but what do these truths unlock in you?
Journal or meditate about this principle of thriving. “Change in our lives isn’t just happening to us. It’s happening for us.” If you could get behind this statement, what could it mean for you right now? Can you act “as if”?
Do a “stay-awake” daily check-in this week. Notice each day: When and how do you avoid risk? Where do you feel sluggish or hypothermic? Is there a risk you can take in these areas of your life? As for waking up: What road will make you stronger? (“Going after things you want, whether or not you get them, makes you stronger.”)
Grab your “I do not know what anything means” sword and slice through negative assumptions. What are you “certain” about that causes you pain or fear right now? Where are you spinning a story that has you feeling constrained? What if it didn’t mean that? Pay attention to how you interpret the behavior of others or your own behaviors.
Do an Inspired Self-Dialogue (see page 248 for directions). Will you side with your higher intelligence or will you side with your darker fears? Which part of you will create this next part of your life? Also, begin to pay attention to what your negative voice sounds like.
Tell a new story: Remember, how you tell your story creates your story. Tell a story right now about what’s going on in your life, from the point of view of you being heroic and life being fully on your side. You are always unconsciously making up stories. Why not consciously make up a story that feels good? Notice how it feels to think this way.
Write out “I am willing to . . .” and fill in the blank five times. Consider this: “It’s worth everything to develop an allegiance to your light.” If it were worth everything to you, what would you consider doing? Five minutes of meditation a morning. Fifteen minutes of journaling. A daily walk. Scheduling an appointment with a coach or therapist. What are the first thoughts that come to your mind? Write out “I am willing to . . .” and fill in the blank five times.
Do you have a question about this chapter? I’d love to know what’s on your mind! I may just get wildly inspired and answer you immediately. Send me your thought or question at www.TamaKieves.com/uncertainty-question, and you can also register for a FREE Thriving Through Uncertainty Coaching Call designed to shift your mind-set and bring you immediate clarity.
CHAPTER TWO
FINDING FAITH WHEN YOU’RE FREAKING OUT
EVERYTHING YOU NEED IS HERE
Another name for God is surprise.
BROTHER DAVID STEINDL-RAST
Are you willing to trade in your “reality” for Unbridled Reality? True desire is the chute to a path of surprises.
TAMA KIEVES (journal entry)
Henry David Thoreau said, “Your religion is where your love is.” And it’s true—we sense a larger presence whenever we love anything. But sometimes we have to give ourselves permission to love what we love, or want what we want. The brain often has untrustworthy brain rationale in the way.
True desire is where everything begins. It’s going to be your clue to unraveling the ball of yarn tied up in knots, otherwise known as your current life. Now, you might view your heart’s desires as irrational. But that’s the point.
This is an awakening experience in your life. It’s time to go past your “rational” mind and activate your heart’s authority, the uncanny abilities of a nonlinear intelligence. Because when you stop blocking what you really want, you stop blocking the inexplicable, unthinkable good that already awaits you. Apparently, the Universe loves an irrational desire.
I have a story to share with you about decorating my living room that isn’t really about decorating my living room, so bear with me if you have a few more pressing catastrophes on your mind. It’s about a miracle. It’s about getting unstuck. It’s about finding your way out of a paper bag and realizing you were standing in the bull’s-eye all along. It’s about listening to your foolproof guidance. It’s about your career, your marriage, your weight, or maybe your living room.
I had been looking at my living room for months, feeling meh on the high end of the spectrum, to “maybe my brain has turned into that white fuzz on your tongue” on the other. I just felt stuck in a life that didn’t represent me anymore. My living room seemed like a daily symbol and advertisement of the paralysis I felt in other areas of my life.
Hoping for interesting ideas, I started looking at houses online, even homes in other states. It felt a little bit like scoping out Match .com while your husband gropes through the refrigerator, commenting on how you really should arrange the shelves more efficiently. Romantic walks on beaches. I’d be checking out the dimensions of that living room, then noticing my own. I quickly learned that every living room looks great with nine-hundred-foot cathedral ceilings. Wall-to-wall windows with an ocean view and whales also do the trick. I live in Denver with neither.
Paul, my partner, started dreaming about ripping out the
ceiling and creating a loft above. Awesome, but way beyond what my overwhelmed mind and bank account had in mind. Realizing that really remodeling was just creating stress, Paul offered magic words: “What if there’s just one simple thing you can do, just to change the energy? What if there’s one thing that starts moving us in the right direction?” So, I started looking around and imagining a different shade of paint, a new couch, or an unusual light fixture. But nothing clicked.
I felt tangled and impatient, two feelings that should never date each other, much less hold each other close, when you’re looking for new insights and breakthroughs. I wanted change, but I didn’t want to put real time into it. I wanted change, but I didn’t want to put money into it. I wanted change, but I didn’t even have ideas as to what I wanted to do. I wanted it to be easy. But everything seemed impossible.
So, I returned to my original desire: I want this room to feel great to me. That’s all I knew. Sensing my frustration and helplessness, Paul suggested, “Don’t think about this room as it is now. Just think about something that would feel like what you want.”
I started thinking about what did feel great. My house was built in 1908. And one of the owners, back in the 1920s, had created an extra room by putting an extension on the back of the house. I love this special room, where we have an Italian oak table and have hosted potlucks, business meetings, Thanksgiving, and other gatherings. This part of the house has a quirky, formidable, black cast-iron wood-burning stove on its own little brick platform. But the best part of that room is an entire wall of exposed brick, uneven texture and happiness, worn solidity and a poetic karma you can’t find in new construction. I fell in love with that room years ago, as it winked its old-house charm at me. It’s why I bought the house.
Thriving Through Uncertainty Page 6