“What would I like to do/be now?” It’s a common experience for many older women to know in their hearts that the time has come to start exploring such a question.
We might choose to deal with such questioning by becoming incredibly busy. Making up our bucket lists of sorts. It sounds easy enough. Make your list and start ticking it off. I think for most of us it is anything but easy.
A lifetime of conditioning creates unwelcome obstacles to us stretching ourselves beyond earlier identities and unchallenged limitations. We have within us a wealth of knowledge, skills, and experience. With our earlier roles fulfilled, and identities blurred, we can find ourselves grasping at some idea of who we are.
When we ask “What do I want now?” we may be fortunate enough to come up with a response. Invariably, the very next word that follows will often be a deeply felt, “but”.
Whatever, follows after the word “but” is where the truth starts to unravel as to why we are not doing what we want even though we know that time for procrastinating is not really on our side. The first answer to such a bold inquiry is what we believe to be the reason we don’t go further. Rarely is that first response the real deal. In order to actually know what the true obstacle is we would need to be open to digging deeper.
I have a very good friend who is a brilliant writer of poetry. Over the course of several years I have been privy to reading her poems and listening to her struggle with the idea of putting her poetry into print. There is no question in my mind that she has a gift and that others will benefit from reading what she writes. Her work comes to her from a place deep within. Some of it is pleasant. Some of it is not. That is life after all.
She, like other creative people, experiences herself as the conduit through which the poetry comes to be shared with others. It isn’t easy to stay in that place, void of ego’s need to be attended to. She has voiced her reluctance to put her work out as she is concerned that some of it might not be well received. So while my friend has this beautiful gift of creativity within her begging to be let out into the world, and the freedom of time to dedicate to her writing, she holds back.
This is not unique to my friend. It’s a common reaction to the idea of allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and take the risk of being rejected. We spent some time talking about this idea of perhaps having some of her work rejected, and over time it become less and less of a consideration as she realized that everyone does not need to appreciate her work in order for it to be worth publishing. Writing poetry is a process, a calling even, and as is the case with any form of creativity if we are to bring it into the world we need to take our ego selves out of the game. We need to let go of the idea that somehow everyone must like what we are offering. After all, do we like everything we encounter?
Looking a little closer we discovered yet another place that she was stuck. In order to publish her book she will not only be called to push through the self-doubt, she will need to fund the self publishing.
The amount of money that will be needed to get her work into publication is not insurmountable and in my mind it’s quite simple. Put up the money and make it happen. In her honest pursuit to uncover the truth of why she still felt stuck she was willing to dig deeper.
She has been unconsciously conditioned over the decades of her life, especially in her informative childhood and early adulthood years, to adopt an vigilant position of insecurity around money.
What might have first appeared as a simple answer to, “Why are you not publishing your poetry?” becomes much more complicated. In order for her to move past this obstacle, she will need to be somehow shake loose of this antiquated, unhelpful belief she has harboured for a very long time.
There is nothing easy whatsoever in looking directly at our beliefs and seeing that they might not actually be true.
Because she is a woman open to honest self-examination she was able to bring her truth into consciousness and get herself unstuck. She can identify where the conditioning has come from. So, one would say, she knew this on an intellectual level.
Knowing something on an intellectual level is only the beginning of meaningful change. In order for her to move ahead, she needed to be courageous and willing to look directly at this concept of money insecurity and honestly weigh this belief against the call for creative expression.
When we ask questions about what women really want as we age we can come up with ideas. This is not the difficult part and to others it seems quite straight forward. We often jump in with a resounding “Just to it!” We are genuinely wanting to be supportive but we might fail to understand that the person is stuck at a deeper level. They also can see the path they want to travel but making the first step toward that seems overwhelming.
If we accept that we are stuck because of old messaging which, at this point in our lives, isn’t serving us then we can look for another way to move forward. Changing beliefs isn’t easy at all. It takes time and often requires continually bringing our awareness to the questioning of these beliefs.
Rather than waiting until we have mastered sorting through such beliefs to the point that they no longer make our choices for us, we can acknowledge the cognitive dissonance experienced in such bold moves, and invite the old belief along for the ride as we work toward what we ultimately want.
In my friends case each time the idea of it being too much money to publish her work, which ultimately blocks her writing, arises she could say something like, “I see you there and I know you are trying to be helpful. I don’t need your help with making this decision. I am going to publish my book of poems. You are welcome to come along for the ride. You may even enjoy it.”
Acknowledging that we are constantly making emotionally-charged decisions, based on static, unquestioned beliefs, is a huge step forward in making meaningful changes. Once we bring our awareness to this reality, these emotions become only part of the experience, not the hub upon which the spokes of our life’s choices must turn.
In closing I am delighted to share that my friend has finalized all of the poetry she wishes to include in her book and is moving toward publication. I am so delighted for her – and for those who will have the opportunity to read her work.
I’ve always found the courage to “shed” my layers when opportunity knocked & was fortunate enough to recognize when I should turn onto a new path, even if it was difficult. Taking that road less travelled has brought me many, many experiences in life that most folks don’t know about or get to learn from. As I age I look back on those life events & changes & try to put them in some kind of order to perhaps document so the stories & people are not lost to history. At the same time I am now aware of the consequences for answering the calling I have always been pulled towards. No choice is without consequence, not necessarily anything negative, just an awareness of the path not taken. Looking back this way is not about regret for me. It’s about acknowledgment that there are many ways to the same lesson, I took but one pathway & look forward to learning about others journey. ~~ the Other Heather ~~
Thank you Heather. I love what you have shared here. It is so true – there are several paths to the same realization. For many the path is anything but smooth. Recently I watched a video of Gabor Mate speaking on how he believes that being too nice can actually make us sick. That’s a topic to be entertained in a future blog. He went on to share from the work of spiritual teacher, A. H. Almaas, how the most difficult things in our lives are also the most compassionate because the part of us that loves us the most puts these roadblocks in our path in a way to bring us closer to ourselves. What might appear to be problems to get rid of are actually lessons to bring us back to our true selves.
Your writing has me exploring my thoughts and the honest deep down barriers to what I want now in my life. Perhaps it is knowing what questions to ask myself to get deeper than the initial response. I am grateful that your blog shakes me up and has awakened me to the knowledge that I can, want to and deserve to, just be truly me.
Please keep writing!
Thank you so much for your comment. I find it very inspiring. We deserve to be our true selves and in order to do so we are called to ask difficult questions and as you say, the right questions.
The idea of letting go, releasing long held limiting beliefs about ourselves has come up a lot for me in the last months/year.
It is a focus in an online meditation group I am part of, as well as a recent 6 month mentorship program I took part in.
The mentorship program really helped me to dig deep, to recognize those false beliefs and where they came from. Doing that allowed me to decide they no longer applied!
The meditations keep the idea top of mind, so I am reminded often.
Recognizing and releasing those limiting beliefs is so freeing!
There’s still lots to work on, but the changes I’ve experienced have made a difference in my attitude and confidence in moving forward.
Thanks, Heather, for your thought provoking articles!
It takes courage to look deep within and unearth these beliefs that we are not even consciously aware of. We can go through our entire lives acting out of such beliefs and limiting our experiences of joy and freedom. Self examination is more difficult to do when we are younger because we are so busy keeping up with our responsibilities. Later when we are gifted with the time and space to choose where we will focus our energy we can either continue on with things as we have always done or we can question the status quo. It takes courage and self compassion because the road to self realization is not without its potholes. Thanks again for your comments.