excitement Archives - Julianne Harvey

For 2017, the three words I wanted to focus on were: open, accepting and anchored. The first two months of this new year are drawing to a close, and I would say that I’ve had a lot of opportunities to focus on being anchored.

I’m working hard on staying in the present moment. I’ve traveled a lot in February, flying to Alberta three times to present at teachers’ conventions in Edmonton and Calgary. Ava’s acting career has also been heating up with lots of auditions and some bookings for film and commercials. This has kept me busy, but in a good way, not a frantic one.

When you have a lot of balls up in the air, it really helps to take each day as it comes instead of worrying about the next day. Each one has enough challenges and excitement in it. I used to live so much in my mind, stressing out over things that were way down the road. This business of anchoring in to each present moment is so much better for my overall sense of life satisfaction.

Meditation has been a huge help to me since the beginning of January. I downloaded Insight Timer to my phone, a free app with lots of guided meditations to choose from on a variety of topics. It’s free (which I love) and setting aside ten to fifteen minutes each morning to indulge in meditation has calmed my mind and my soul more than I ever dreamed possible.

It’s not an overstatement to say that I feel like a completely different person. One that can handle uncertainty and short timelines much better than before. I can now roll with the punches and I’ve accepted that it’s fine not to have the next twenty steps neatly mapped out. It’s enough to know what I’m doing at this moment and have a vague idea of the next step. Anything beyond that feels too stressful.

Anchoring myself is a wonderful gift. I credit meditation as the number one change I’ve made in the last two months, but also simply fine-tuning my awareness and working at calming myself when I’m anxious has made a big difference to the overall peace I’m experiencing. Sometimes we need a scary illness like I had this summer to properly crystallize what matters and be finally able to let go of what hangs us up and never really served us.

My need to control has been a lifelong habit, strangling me without me being aware of how hampering it was. But now I’ve learned a better way of coping, one that involves kind words to myself and to others around me, plus a clear understanding that I am in charge of very little in this life. And that’s okay. It’s up to me to keep my mind sharp and clear, to push out of the way all of the little irritations and time-wasters that conspire to steal my joy.

I’m feeling grounded, anchored, held. I can easily admit I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I have very few of them. But it’s really fine. No one has all the answers. If they say they do, they are lying to cover up their overall anxiety level. Gentleness works better. So does staying in the moment. Having a sense of humour helps too.

Worrying about tomorrow truly does rob today of its happiness. I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m staying here, right now, and noticing what’s in me and around me. What a difference this change has made to the quality of my days and my willingness to try new and challenging things.

Change is a process. We can’t see it clearly peering into the future, but when we look back it’s easier to plot the high and low points on our individual graph.

I’ve come to recognize that the groundwork for change gets laid days, weeks, months and years ahead of the actual shift that we can point to and identify. Extreme patience is required in the preparation stage. It’s the seeds, deep underground, beginning to grow but nowhere near ready to burst through the soil and make themselves visible.

So much of this life is preparing. We must wait, whether we like it or not, until the time is right for the longed-for change to take place. As humans, we are wired to become bored and discontent when our existence becomes too predictable and safe. We crave adventure, change, new scenery and experiences. It’s in our DNA.

But between the desire and the reality there is a gap. Sometimes it’s short and other times it’s dishearteningly long. Most of us would not make big changes unless we first felt motivated by boredom or loss or an inner compulsion to inject fresh vitality back into our lives. It’s easy for inertia to set in, to lull us into complacency, but when the spark ignites for something new, we begin to stir up our excitement and then we usually have to wait.

I’m trying to change the way I view this preparatory period. I know that work is happening, deep in my soul, just as surely as flowers bloom out of buried seeds and not by accident. We’ve been painting our house and boy, oh boy, painting is mostly prep work. And the preparation doesn’t look like much, but without it you’d never get to those beautifully altered, crisp and clean walls.

Change is a long, messy, unpredictable process. You get great news and you’ll be flying high, then a rejection or a disappointment hits and you feel abject despair, all of that inspirational hope erased like a whiteboard. Life is a series of hurdles. Some you clear with room to spare and you are filled to the brim with success and optimism. Others you smack into and fall hard, occasionally breaking a bone or bruising your confidence, and you have no choice but to muster the courage to stand up and try for the next one.

Preparation is critical to implement change at some point in the future. We wait, we dream, we continue to work even when the odds are stacked against us. It’s better to believe that those seeds are, in fact, growing, even if we can’t see them. We show up, day after day, learning what we can and refusing to give up on what we long for most. And one day, perhaps when we least expect it, all of that prep work will turn into actual change, just in time to start the process over again with something else.

Showing all posts tagged excitement

Anchored

Preparing for Change