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\nHow our familiarity and what we\u2019re comfortable with builds a whole world, with its own particular horizon of possibilities. Why it might be that the very thing that\u2019s most called for to change things in the ways we long for is to do the last thing we\u2019d imagine. And how we can help one another grow by being the ones who lovingly find a way to welcome and explore the unfamiliar in one another.
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\nThis week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
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\nTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.\xa0 Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
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\nHere\u2019s our source for this week:
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\nThe Awkwardness Principle
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\n\u201cThe practices that carry the greatest potential for transformative change are usually counter-instinctual.\u201d\xa0
\n\u2014Bruce Tift
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\nIf you\u2019re trying to get better at life in some way \u2013 more patient, or better at listening, or less prone to procrastination or anxiety or self-sabotage \u2013 the necessary actions are pretty much guaranteed not to feel especially good. They\u2019re more likely to feel scary, or at least awkward, like wearing an ill-fitting shirt, or writing with your non-dominant hand. While learning to be patient, you should expect to feel restless. As you embark on a long-postponed creative project, you should expect to feel unready. One way or another, change will feel crappy.
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\nThis shouldn\u2019t really come as a surprise. After all, you\u2019re attempting in some way to be different than you are. (That\u2019s true, by the way, even if your goal is to become more accepting of how things are.) Yet your entire personality, up to this moment, has been one long exercise in getting good at being who you currently are. So of course you\u2019ll feel ungainly and self-conscious when you try to do otherwise...
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\nMost of us grow up with the deep-seated belief that there are certain feelings we can\u2019t allow ourselves to feel. Maybe you were raised with the message that you shouldn\u2019t depend too much on others, or that you shouldn\u2019t stand out from the crowd, or that you should stand out from the crowd, or that you should always have a clear plan for the future, or that people are out to take advantage of you...
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\nFor a small child, falling in with these family patterns feels like a matter of survival. So by the time you\u2019re an adult, you\u2019re deeply convinced that easing up on them \u2013 that is, by allowing yourself to depend on others, or stand out, or operate without a clear plan, etcetera \u2013 would be to invite disaster. No wonder the prospect seems utterly terrifying.
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\nOliver Burkeman
\nwww.oliverburkeman.com
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\nPhoto by Ion Fet on Unsplash\n