As I write this week’s blog post, I’m sitting in an airport. I’m freezing, and I’m so cold I’m actually considering putting on all the clothes in my suitcase. I’ve had a job assignment the past couple days that has kept me on my feet for hours at a time. While I wore comfortable shoes, the long amounts of standing triggered the scoliosis in my back, and my lower back and right hip are painful. Sometimes I can ignore it, but the pain is at the point at which it will not be ignored any longer. The scoliosis (curvature of the spine) usually acts up during PMS each month, and oh, yeah, I might be experiencing that fun, too.* I’m tired – having spent a couple nights in a noisy hotel, just down the street from a busy firehouse and across the street from an active, early-starting construction crew – and being sleep deprived never helps anything.
All of this “background” helps explain (at least to me) why I’m having such difficulty writing a decent blog post this week. Usually, writing for the blog comes easy to me, and I find it enjoyable. But today, I’ve gone through three different topics, none of which turned into anything worth sharing, and the last one, which I thought maybe was good enough, disappeared when I unexpectedly and inexplicably lost my Internet connection. (F*&K! Saving ridiculously often now.)
So I realized all of this Uncomfortableness is actually a pretty decent topic. My mentor, Martha Beck, talks about the Cycle of Change in her book Finding Your Own North Star. In it, she describes four squares we go through during any major change in our life. Square 1 is known as “Death and Rebirth,” and this is the stage at which we feel the most confusion (“I don’t know what the hell is going on”) as the way we had defined ourselves has changed, and we haven’t yet figured out who we are without the old role or title. Square 2, “Dreaming & Scheming,” is when we begin to create concepts of a new future, and Square 3, “the Hero’s Saga,” is where we test out those schemes and figure out what really works for us. Square 4 is “the Promised Land,” where things smooth out, but the mantra is “Everything’s changing, and that’s okay” because everything always does change. I love sharing the Cycle of Change with my clients because it provides people with a sense of understanding and community (“Oh, so that’s what’s happening to me! And everyone feels this at some point”) and also a sense of hope (Square 2 and 4 are the most-looked-forward to).
Martha’s been saying lately that with the rapid pace of change in our world, we are pretty much in Square 1 nearly all the time. (So much for my hope idea.) So to survive, to not drive ourselves insane, we have to get more comfortable with being a little uncomfortable. We have to learn to roll with the punches, surf the chaotic waters, and maintain our equilibrium.
How do we do this? By going within. Peace cannot be found outside of ourselves; it must be found within. And when there is peace within, then we can take that peace out into the world.
As I play out the role of airport hobo today and stop fighting the Uncomfortableness, I let myself sink into feeling grumpy, tired and in pain, and I actually find a little relief. I don’t have to be anything more than what I am in this moment, and there’s some peace in that. Struggling against it all, wishing it wasn’t happening or thinking it should be better just prolongs the suffering. Accepting the present moment, just as it is, not trying to MAKE it be better than it is, actually feels better.
Or maybe the ibuprofen I took is finally kicking in. Peace out!
* If you want (or need) a really funny (and accurate) Life Coach’s Guide to PMS, go visit Bridgette Boudreau’s site. Hilarious and some great advice for getting through it!