Have you ever been on the highway, cruising along, when all of a sudden you see traffic is practically at a standstill? Brake lights seem to run for miles. Cars are barely inching forward. You start to wonder what the hell is going on. As you stay the course, and start to move forward, slowly but surely making progress, you start to identify a few things. Merging traffic from an on-ramp. A lane shift up ahead. The construction sign announcing the merging lanes. Two lanes narrowing to one. You notice the time, and start to do the calculations..... repopulating your map for updated travel times and looking for alternate routes. "Do I still have time? Do I want to deal with this mess?" These thoughts and more start running through your mind - weighing the options and filtering according to your top priorities. This is exactly what merging two versions of yourself is like. Let's shift for a minute. Throughout our lifetimes we continue to evolve - To navigate the contraction and expansion phases of our identities. To re-emerge as something different than we were before, while still being ourselves. It's not always easy. But it doesn't need to be nearly as hard as most of us MAKE it. How are you possibly making it hard on yourself?!? How are YOU creating even more discomfort? How are you adding to the challenges? Well, let me ask you - How HONEST & AWARE are you of who you are, what you're facing, and where you're going? AND how much are you fighting with yourself over who or where you "should be" versus who or where you ARE in this moment (that's what we call expectations, folx)?!? See, merging pieces of ourselves is similar to merging lanes on a highway in a construction zone. There's a lot of information available to us, if we're paying attention. Having a hierarchy of priorities and values can help you determine what actions are best for the current situation. And having reasonable expectations around what you can do, realizing when you can change your mind, and what YOU are responsible for, can streamline the process. Plus patience will get you a looooong way, and accepting the current circumstance will take you even further (and save you a whole lot of pain along the way).
When you hit that snails pace traffic, on the road or in life, the thing that's truly creating difficulty is the RANGE of approaches to navigating the situation. None necessarily right or wrong, but mostly different from one another. Think about how the process could be streamlined if the approach was CONSISTENT. If individual pieces were accepted as they are, and given their place to inform the situation and take action. Where this can get difficult lies in a couple of different factors. 1) Your actual acceptance (or lack thereof) of the situation and/or dynamics. If you're spending more time wishing it were something else, complaining about the circumstances, griping about how its affecting you, or burning time and energy dancing around the perimeter of your experience (vs. immersing yourself IN it), you my friend are not only resisting what is, you're actively denying the reality of the situation. That doesn't mean you can't wish it was different. The difference lies in WHERE you invest your time and energy. It lies in identifying what's out of your control, and where you DO have choice. It lies in whether you attach yourself to a victim mentality, or whether you recognize what you're co-creating the current circumstances (and whether you choose to immerse yourself in shifting what that is moving forward). When you're navigating life, there are signs that inform what's going on, what to expect, and different ways to navigate it (those signs are incredibly varied depending on the individual, the dynamic of the experience, cultural standards, and so many more things). When you're navigating new things in life, or different ways of being, it's going to take longer. PERIOD. Not because there's something wrong with you, but because there's an ebb and flow in the merging. It's like the cars that take turns both letting others in AND merging into the traffic. How efficiently and PAINLESSLY that happens is more dependent on how rushed each one is, how accepting each one is (of the circumstances), how much one prioritizes the overall outcome vs. their individual agenda, and things of that nature. When we try to rush through a process, or deny and/or refuse integration, THAT'S when the process can come to a standstill (or creep to an infuriating snails pace). What would happen, instead, if you chose to start where you are? That may seem like a silly question because, no matter what, you ARE right "here". But how HONEST are you being with yourself about what you're feeling? How EMPOWERED do you feel to take positive action? And is your SELF-AWARENESS deep enough to provide the clues and signs that will lead to a less frustrating and forced way of being? We've become so easily convinced that we don't have control over a situation, when in fact it's less about control and more about ACCEPTANCE. Can you accept the situation as it is (and no, that does not mean LIKE it), and spend less time focusing on all the things you can't control while paying more attention and investing more energy into the things you CAN control? Friend, the signs are there IF you'll slow down enough to see them. The "flow of traffic (ahem, life)" depends largely on your willingness to approach it with grace, compassion, and understanding. How quickly you navigate this will mostly depend on whether or not you can identify the overall best objective, and take the actions that align with that outcome. Slow down. Pay attention. Be patient. Don't make the knowing (or the control) more important than the being. All my love 💗
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