Words: Clare Dwyer Hogg
Image: Barney Beech
What to do when a plan falls through? You know, when you think things are working on a continuum, but then there’s a kink in the path. When suddenly things go awry. It happened to me last week. The context was work, when something stopped that I thought was ongoing.
It’s tempting to panic when this happens. I submitted to temptation for a bit. Various panicked thoughts came and went. And then I was privy to some wisdom (via my parents), which pointed me in a good direction of thought. Here’s the idea: in all areas of creativity – be it work, family, anything you do – there is some kind of process that pushes us to keep developing. Yet when something goes wrong, there’s immediately a tendency to think you’ve gone a step backwards. That was my response, last week.
It’s easy to see why I’d think that – it looked like I’d lost something. Which, technically, I had. In my slightly flustered response, I mentally flicked back. What was I doing before my recent revenue-generator? What had I stopped? I was going to have to resurrect those streams of income. Attempt to bring to life things resting quietly in peace. Very quickly, I began to operate from the perspective that I’d gone back a step.
But what if I’m not back to where I was? What if I’m a step further towards where I’m going? That would mean that although the landscape looks similar, I’m actually travelling deeper into it. Yet if I don’t realise this,
I can quite easily sabotage my own journey. If I think I’ve gone backwards, instead of deeper, I’ll act in ways that I did before. I’ll try to breathe life into ways of being that reached a natural end. I’ll think I’ve already discovered what the landscape holds – when within it is a whole new place. It’s so easy to suffocate a new chance, just by assuming a perspective on the situation that is so heavy and bloated that it squeezes all the life out.
Giving your mind space is the hard thing. Not to act immediately – not to quickly re-find well-worn paths
So far, so easy (to say). What does it mean in practice? When I stopped scrabbling around for ideas of what I did in the past, and started to think about what the new space I was in offered, things began to look different. Subtly so, but different. I thought of an idea that previously I hadn’t had the space to entertain. It wasn’t an immediate fix-it idea, but it could be, slightly further down the line. If I hadn’t had the space, I definitely wouldn’t have thought of it. It also fits in more fluidly to my very long-term plan (which is as subject to as many twists and turns as the short term ones).
It’s interesting. What I needed was some space. I think if I hadn’t had the pointer in the right direction from the wisdom of others, I would have taken a deep breath and gone back to doing the things I’d done before, even though they didn’t feel quite right for this time. Weirdly, giving your mind space is the hard thing. Not to act immediately – very tricksy. Not to quickly re-find well-worn paths – so difficult. Yet I realised it doesn’t have to be a retreat or sabbatical type of space (life calls, after all, with bills and other such realities). It just has to be enough to sit on my hands and wait and think. Enough space to wonder if what seems like a fail is actually an opening. If it’s an invitation into a deeper realm of experience on your given path.
Assuming it is, then, how do I not sabotage the opportunity for new growth? And what newness can cultivating that perspective open up to me? This, by the way, is an ongoing question. I’m only just setting out to explore that perspective myself. Watch this space (I am).
