change Archives - Page 3 of 6

In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships

The Key to Personal Freedom

Julianne HarveyNovember 29, 2016Leave a comment

Freedom from other people’s approval is an ongoing struggle for many of us, but when we experience small victories it’s important to step back and take stock of just how far we have come.

I used to crave approval like it was a drug. I was only okay if someone else gave me permission. The entire world looked different when I realized that I could give myself the approval I yearned for instead of searching for it from others.

It’s helpful with all growth to measure it in tiny incremental steps. Something in our human nature wants instant gratification (a condition only worsening with the internet available in our pocket, where any touch of a button yields immediate results) so anything less feels like failure. But the only way to sustain change is to approach it in little ways that don’t completely overwhelm us.

A person was angry with me recently and I didn’t become unhinged like I would have a few years ago. I was able to breathe through my anxiety and halt any developing shame spirals. I said calmly to myself, “I’m allowed to own my feelings and actions and this person is allowed to own theirs. We don’t have to agree. I’m okay.”

This type of positive self talk is huge in recovery from people pleasing. It takes us down off the ledge, turning mild hysteria magically back into tranquility. It felt so good to see how far I have come with my new and healthier skills. The exchange I had with this person knocked me off my stride for ten minutes instead of ten days, months or even decades.

The key to personal freedom is incremental growth. It’s one small alteration at a time, which over years adds up to a big difference in a moment of stress when you really need it. When a person can no longer push your buttons and get the expected reaction from you, you’ll know you have cut the cord and broken free. Now you are fully in charge of your own reactions and emotions, but this wouldn’t have happened for me without all of the hard soul work that came before.

We are all human. We make mistakes. We can become mired in a swamp of other people’s approval and get stuck, spinning our wheels and stewing over what other people are doing. But we can also make different choices, on any given day, and start to build a bridge to our own freedom. We can say, “This is unacceptable. I am worth more than this. I want kindness, honesty and love with no strings attached.”

We can stand up for ourselves and taste how joyful that feeling is. We are not responsible for other people’s happiness. Only our own. And getting to that understanding in our actual experience is what sets us free.

In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth

When Worried, We Have Two Choices

Julianne HarveyNovember 8, 2016November 7, 2016Leave a comment

Like most people, I’m concerned about the U.S. election today. But I’m over worrying about the things I cannot control. I’ve wasted too much time on that already.

When something is worrying us, we have two choices. We can stew and obsess and forecast disaster. Or we can intentionally choose to hope that it’s all going to work out the way it’s meant to. Probably not the way we would design it, but we only have a portion of the information we need at any given time. In order to see the whole picture, we have to simply keep going to see what’s next.

This summer I decided to live in the now instead of the future or the past. It was easier to do this when I was sick in the hospital and recovering at home, because my whole world shrank down to the next hour in front of me. I could not make any plans for anything beyond that.

Once I accepted this reality, everything got easier, simpler and clearer. Planning for the next hour makes more sense than the next month, year or decade. But when I recovered from my ruptured appendix and we were suddenly moving to BC and dealing with massive change, my commitment to staying in the present was put to the test.

And I failed, more often than not. Lately I’m stuck in the past, longing for the comforts of the life we had built for ten years in Alberta: predictable, safe, reliable. Our new existence in the lower mainland is the opposite, but I know this is a temporary instability.

So I’m back to the two choices when I’m worried. Stew and obsess or hope it’s all going to work out. My fallback is always number one, but I can work at this and choose a better option for my mental health.

At the end of 2015 I picked three words to focus on for the new year: strong, clear, optimistic. I’m reminded of these now when I feel weak, muddled, hopeless. We can all do hard things. We can make it through the challenges we face on a daily basis. We can choose optimism over despair.

No matter what happens tonight with the election, I’m not going to allow it to steal any more of my peace and contentment. I’m going to love myself through the change in the U.S. government the way I must love myself through every other obstacle that arises.

It’s all going to be okay. It’s going to work out like it’s supposed to. Believing this can be challenging, but it’s preferable to the fetal position where we are too afraid to continue. Let’s put our fear aside and trust in God, the universe, goodness, ourselves.

Let’s believe that something bigger is going on here than we can piece together with our own perspective. When all of the pieces are eventually revealed, our individual lives will make more sense, to us and to others. For now what we need is optimism, teamwork and kindness. We can get through this together.

In Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships

Rekindling Hope

Julianne HarveyNovember 1, 2016Leave a comment

When hope rekindles where you once felt empty and bereft, it’s like coming alive again. It’s the first twitch in your fingers, signalling that your coma is ending and you are returning to a state of normalcy again.

These last three months have been a true slog. Unpredictable, scary, lonely, exciting and sad, all boiled up together in a stew of change.

Every day, I tell myself to be kind and gentle in order to survive a series of hurdles to my preferred stable routines, but the relief of finally being in our own space again this past week has loosened something primitive in me. I’ve become unhinged, crying at random intervals and experiencing a near-catatonic internal state as a reaction to rising panic and dread.

I felt certain that my growth work of the last few years had been tragically reversed by this provincial move. I craved the order and calm I fought so hard to establish in Alberta, but it has eluded me at every turn since we’ve arrived in BC.

When will I learn to stop being so fatalistic and permanent with my dire predictions? When I’m under extreme stress, it’s important to recognize this and love myself through it, the way I would assist a friend, my husband or my kids. Instead, I decide that the jig is up and I’ll never be happy or peaceful again.

The type of upheaval we have gone through since the summer is bound to cause disruption. It must be my coping mechanism to forecast disaster in the face of what I cannot control. This is how I made it through childhood with a mentally ill and alcoholic father and an emotionally icy mother.

I learned not to count on anything. I anticipated the worst possible outcome so that anything less felt manageable. I’ve carried this unhealthy skill into adulthood and it hangs me up from time to time.

The solution is to acknowledge what is going on and to work at changing my fearful reactions. I’m the grown-up now, responsible for two children of my own. It’s up to me to model better responses for my kids to follow.

This too shall pass. Stress is not a permanent state. I’m responsible for my own mental health. When I feel unmoored and lost, like I do now, I must slow down and make the effort to reconnect with myself. Jason and I went on a dinner date this weekend and I had serious trouble vulnerably sharing with him. I realized it was because I was so far from myself.

At least I know what the job is now. I have to turn my signs of life back into actual life. It’s time to tend to my own soul; to find my equilibrium and the peace of mind I’ve been missing. Self care is a daily practice. When it’s neglected, nothing feels right or balanced. I have hope that I can return to my previous state of mental health if I give myself some time and effort.

In Minimalism, Nurture, Personal Growth

The Dark Side of Change

Julianne HarveyOctober 25, 2016Leave a comment

The dark side of change happens just after the initial excitement dies down. Now you are in the middle of something foreign and strange, without the usual familiar landmarks.

I hate this part of the process. It’s necessary and cannot be avoided, but it’s also unsettling and awkward. I end up declaring that I’ve made a huge mistake, but then I realize that once again I’ve confused unfamiliarity with disaster.

Change is messy. It’s frustrating and awful and glorious, all at the same damn time. The only way I know to get through to the transformation is to trudge through the mud of the frightening middle. No shortcuts exist when we are trying to jumpstart our lives.

We moved this past weekend into our townhouse. As a family, we’ve embraced the ideals of minimalism, but I’ve discovered that it’s one thing to believe in a philosophy and another thing to put it into practice.

Downsizing from a five-bedroom home into a much-smaller three-bedroom townhouse is bloody hard. What looked sleek and clean after minimizing in my big house now appears cluttered and overstuffed in my new space, even after getting rid of lots of our possessions.

I hit several metaphorical walls as we moved in (not to mention literal ones when attempting to bring boxsprings up narrow staircases). I began longing for my big and comfortable house where I knew every inch of the space I had. I craved the familiar, the simple, the stress-free. I cried, a lot. I felt afraid that this move was never going to work and wondered if we could unpick everything that brought us to this point.

Sleep and time are two wonder cures for the exhausted mind and body. My instinct is often to rush, to unpack everything in a single day, to paint every room on all three floors instead of taking it wall by wall. I have trouble celebrating the progress that I make when there are still so many problem areas to solve.

Big change is not easy. If it were straightforward, everyone would be doing it. A provincial move is a stressful experience. The best we can do is be patient and gentle with ourselves while in the midst of so much uncertainty.

Everything we do involves both loss and gain. We say goodbye so that we can now say hello. We cry over what is gone but then we smile when we consider what is ahead. Just because it’s unfamiliar doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just not what we know, at least not yet.

I must give this move time. I cannot set the bar so high in terms of what I can get done in a day, a week or even an hour. Process is slow and messy and unpredictable. It’s okay to feel lost and unsure. This is part of being alive. Frailty and grief come with the package deal that is humanity.

When I’m overwhelmed, I will slow down. I will remind myself to breathe. To unclench and surrender to what I cannot possibly see coming. I’ll pet my cats and watch them sleep, for this is a spiritual practice.

The only way to get through the dark side of change is to soldier on. To laugh when the opportunities present themselves. To celebrate using weapons like sparkling wine and Halloween chocolate. To be when I feel more comfortable with the word “do”. To anticipate that some days are simply going to be hard as we make our way through big life transitions.

In Nurture, Relationships

Hope in the Beautiful Places

Julianne HarveyOctober 18, 2016October 17, 2016Leave a comment

The CT scan to diagnose my ruptured appendix this July showed up a shadow on my liver. The attending doctor suggested I follow up with an abdominal ultrasound to see if it was something or nothing.

I went for the ultrasound and was there a long time. I took this as a good sign as it seemed like the technician was hunting for something and couldn’t seem to find it.

Then the doctor’s office called to ask me to come in for results. “It’s not urgent,” she said. I convinced myself that it was all fine.

But when I went to see the doctor, it wasn’t fine. Instead of one shadow, there were now seven. They could be benign cysts, there all along and simply not visible in the appendix CT, or what was one concerning spot has now grown to seven in a matter of two months.

I left the clinic with my heart sitting like lead in my chest, clutching my next ultrasound order for a month from now to see what’s going on then. I know this could be a lot of fuss over nothing, but I also know that it could be something quite scary and uncertain. There’s nothing I can do but wait.

Letting go of my ardent desire to know everything now is a lifelong struggle. When I was so sick in the hospital, willing myself to stop puking after surgery, I learned kicking and screaming to take each moment as it comes instead of pre-ordaining what I want to happen.

I vowed I would keep this mentality in my regular life. I felt desperate for my appendix rupture and bumpy recovery to mean something. It was huge and monumental and powerfully affecting and I longed for those changes to stay with me. To change me.

But life has been on fast forward as we prepare to take possession of our new house in BC, and it’s been too easy for me to fall back into old habits. I spend so damn much time forecasting and not enough time remaining open to whatever possibility will present itself next. Why was I so sure the doctor would say this shadow was nothing to worry about? Is that my coping mechanism to hedge against disaster?

Like all of us, I have no choice but to keep going. The sun will rise and it will set. My kids will make me laugh, Jason will reach for my hand, I’ll eat popcorn and watch Netflix. What we have is the moment we are in. The job is to stay present, within ourselves and with those we love most.

It’s okay to be scared and sad and unsure. I’m grateful to have a tribe of friends that I can reach out to and they don’t offer me false hope. They say, “We love you, we are with you, we will help you carry this so you don’t feel alone.” They remind me that I am strong and brave and that I can do hard things. This helps tremendously to lighten the load.

I can’t control the rest, but I can be kind and gentle to myself every day and search for the smallest ray of hope in the unlikely and most beautiful of places.