This Much I Know Is True: Part I

I figure there is no better way to end the year and start a new one than to reflect a little on lessons learned during this last spin around the sun. That's what you'll find here over the next few days: my biggest Aha moments of the year. Now, some of these lessons I learned for the first time this year, some I re-learned for what seems like the gazillionth time, and some of these I am still in the process of figuring out. Hopefully, you can find one or two lessons to relate to. And, if you read my growing list and find yourself shaking your head and saying, "Girl, took you long enough," then you should probably contact me so we can talk about you becoming my guru or life coach. Seriously.

But here you have it- the first few ideas that, thanks to the passing of another 365 days, I finally absolutely positively know to be true:

1. Time ripens all things.

I’ve been scribbling this little Cervantes quote in birthday cards for years, but this year, I think I finally started to believe it. If I think back to many of the big decisions I’ve taken and the important changes I’ve made, they often seem to the outside world to be either unforeseen impulses or plans that I talk and talk and talk about but never actually do. The truth is, I’m a "percolator". I sit on things for a loooooooong time. I used to think this was fear-based, and maybe sometimes it is, but, really, so what. I know many say that when you have a wish, a dream, a vision, a goal, you should just go for it, but I know I have to let things soak in, let the seeds take root, feel it out from different scenarios, hum, haw, and then one morning, I’ll wake up and be ready. It’s taken a long time of living inside this head and going through the decision-making process to finally recognize that this is my process, and that my process is totally okay. If you think about it, all these years of living on this spinning planet have allowed me to invest in myself, hone my intuition, gain skills and experience and hopefully a little wisdom along the way, so that when the time is right, I’ll know it. Few huge decisions need to be made overnight. There’s rarely a need for urgency. This means that if an opportunity comes up and I’m not ready, then I’m not ready- as simple as that- but someday I might be, and if it turns out that when I’m ready, it’s actually too late, that I’ve missed out on some once-in-a-lifetime awesomeness, chances are that some other equally awesome opportunity will very likely come my way. And recognizing that is a fantastic relief!

2. It is almost never actually the end of the world.

This, I suppose, is an idea connected to the first truth. I figure if I can trust that I will know when the time is right, I can also trust that I will know what to do in a time of crisis, that I can probably handle any worst-case scenario thrown my way. Sure, maybe I might need a little help, maybe I might need a little time, maybe there’ll be some unfortunate cost, but seriously, I have yet to encounter a situation that truly deems the anxiety I bestow upon it. I sometimes think I am addicted to anxiety, that I can’t handle stillness so I create catastrophe, and creating catastrophe all the time is so bloody exhausting. The truth is that in spite of hitting some pretty low spots over the last few years health-wise, money-wise, relationship-wise, there’s never been a hole so deep that I haven’t somehow managed to find my way out. I have to remind myself of this constantly- that the world will keep on spinning in spite of my missed deadlines, messy house, unclear vision of the future. There are very few things that warrant an urgent sense of crisis. The funny thing about anxiety, though, is the (dis)connection between the physical response- the knot in the stomach, the heaviness in the chest, the shortness of breath- and the mental understanding of the response. Sometimes, I physically feel the anxiety first, and because I feel the physical sensation, I assume I must be legitimately in need of worrying, justified in my panic response. In these moments, there are two things I try to remember. The first is that it is very difficult to argue with Anxiety. You can pretty much always find something to worry about. Always. So trying to rationally approach Anxiety doesn’t really work. It will always argue back, which is why I jump directly to the worst-case scenario. If I can imagine it, and then understand that I can handle it, then I can believe that it is not the end of the world after all, and then somehow I can give myself permission to not let the physical sensation dictate what should be going on in my head space. The second thing I try to remember is something I learned from a wise woman this summer when I was in Costa Rica. She told me that when we find ourselves in a freak-out swirl of worry, it helps to just “drop into the now” and breathe. If you are really, truly focusing on your breath, there is no room for worry. Now, I can't really truly focus on any one thing at a time so I haven’t quite mastered this one, but trying is a very good start!

3. “No” doesn’t need to be followed by “but” or “because”.

Now, this one has taken me a very long time to learn, perhaps because of all these years I’ve spent arguing with teenagers in my classroom about why my “No means No”, answering their “Why”s and their “But that’s so unfair”s with detailed explanation as I try and guide their still developing brains to an understanding of delayed gratification and the value of foresight. This has all somehow made me believe that I must offer others an explanation when I say “No” to undertaking a project, to participating in a meeting, to offering extra help, to attending a dinner party, but the truth is that very rarely does anyone ever ask why I am saying “No.” Funnily enough, most folks seem to assume that if I said “No”, I must have a perfectly good reason. In fact, asking me for a justification of my response would actually be kind of rude! And, a little addendum here, it turns out that when the request happens to just be for a favour, the decision to ask me specifically very, very, very rarely has to do with the asker valuing my unique expertise, but much more so with the fact that my long-standing reputation as an infrequent naysayer has landed me the spot of first target on their quest for a sucker who will say “Yes”. 

More later.