Show Notes:

The really cool but often uncomfortable thing about life changes is that they open up an opportunity, a potential, for learning and growth. They tend to push us into a place of HAVING to do something differently, and by extension, learning about ourselves, what fits for us and what doesn’t, and sorting our way through how we either contort ourselves or how we make things contort to fit us. 

Like I said, it tends to be uncomfortable – because as people we crave routine, stability, predictability, and so on. We like to know what to expect and have a clear sense of what is coming next. Being pushed out of our comfort zone, out of our routine and predictable, and being forced into new and unknown terrain, is going to feel uncomfortable. And that’s ok. …But it is also what makes stage of life changes feel so overwhelming and daunting. If we aren’t accustomed to uncomfortable…if we aren’t open to discomfort for the sake of growing…then we’ll have a tendency to shut down, enter survival mode, hope to God the discomfort ends soon, and likely not take much from the opportunity other than negative self-perceptions and resentment toward the transition. 

Certainly I can appreciate digging heels in and not wanting to enter a time of transition or change. I have had my fair share of metaphorically curling up into a ball and waiting for it all to be over, refusing to participate in the opportunity for growth. Often when the invitation intime of change felt unwanted and forced upon me with all the doom and gloom feelings of the world ending…Sometimes even in changes that were good and that I had a hand in choosing…because it felt big and hard and called me into discomfort I wasn’t fully prepared to face. 

That said, out of these experiences I have learned a lot and have tried to adapt toward embracing these opportunities rather than trying to run and hide from them. And today I am sharing the number one trick I can offer around how to engage and embrace times of transition – whether happy and hopeful changes, or hard and unwanted ones. Here it is: Be a scientist.

Ok, here’s what I mean. Scientists, by nature, are curious. They are open to possibilities and interested not in any one specific agenda or outcome (or at least they aren’t supposed to be…) but rather interested in learning a little more and allowing that to lead to new questions and directions. Scientists make educated guesses, but go where the data takes them. They set a hypothesis and try to prove it wrong rather than prove it right. They are willing to try things out and when they don’t work out the way they expected, they take that as learning. And you guys, THIS is what we have to do in our lives.

So, let’s talk about experimentation and being a scientist. Now, we’re going to start in a place that will likely be familiar if you are a loyal listener of this show. Every good scientist starts by asking a question. That is where the process begins. And to ask the question to begin with, they need to have noticed a pattern or oddity that elicits the curiosity to say, “why?”. And that brings us back once again to the need for AWARENESS. We have talked about this SO many times before on the show – that we can’t take intentional steps in any direction if we don’t first have awareness of where we’re at and how it relates to where we imagine wanting to be or go. Scientists ask questions based on observations – they notice a thing and then get curious about it and ask more questions. 

The first step in acting like a scientist in our lives is to have some carved out scientist time. To have time set aside where we can slow down and notice. When we are caught up in the survival mode moment-to-moment chaos of our days, or when we numb out or distract ourselves in every down-time moment, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to take stock and notice what is happening in us and around us. Having moments of quiet pause throughout a day and a week is what allows us to take note of patterns, oddities and other bits and pieces that can inform the questions we ask next. 

Step two in being a scientist is to ask a question. We’ve taken time to pause, we’ve looked inward and outward, and there are some things we’re noticing. One of the insightful pieces that came up for me about a year ago was awareness that there is a craving for reconnecting with things I used to love and enjoy. I noticed feeling nostalgic in weird moments – a great example was watching Olympic rock climbing with my kids, and while I was never a great climber…or even a very good climber…I used to rock climb and really enjoyed this. It actually was a really meaningful life line for me at a particularly difficult time in my teens and continued to be an important part of my life in early adulthood. I kept saying to my kids, “mommy used to do rock climbing” and each time it felt sad and disconnected from anything they know about me now. So, I got to asking some questions: “why is sadness the feeling that comes up when I think about this?”, “what is it I miss about climbing”, “what would it look like to try to climb again?”, “what would get in my way from climbing again?” and so on. 

Now let me be clear, I didn’t run out and buy a harness and throw myself into climbing. That’s not real life. But, it opened up thoughts that I hadn’t allowed to live there before and it has yielded some amazing moments for me and with my kids and family that I am so grateful for. It turns out, my son loves climbing too. He and I went for a mommy-son date last winter to a bouldering gym and it was the best bonding. As a family we hit up a kids climbing gym while on holidays and made some fantastic memories together. And while hiking around Squamish, one of our favourite places on earth, we would make climbing challenges and compete with each other and it brought endless laughs and some epic stories the kids will tell on repeat. 

This brings us to step three of being a scientist…experimenting. When we have awareness and some questions, we can take time to formulate a plan. But the key to this plan is unlike most planning in our lives where we have a sense of certainty and a need to know how it will all turn out, we’re going to enter this planning with curiosity and openness to it going in unexpected ways and being ok with that. Rigidity is not our friend here, the goal is to try some things and learn from them. It might look like experimenting with things you have done before, or adapting things you’ve done before to fit into life now, or it might look like trying out totally new things.

I feel like what should be obvious to you is that none of this is rocket science, but when we treat it like science of some kind, we can become intentional about how we choose to engage in our lives and lean in to what we’re in rather than fighting against it or succumbing to the weight of it. During this episode I share that 2021 was a crappy year for us. It was incredibly hard and I wouldn’t want to do it again. But, I also learned a lot about myself. I learned that I am capable of more than I ever knew. And I learned how to care for myself ridiculously well in the midst of a really trying time – which gives me so much confidence in my ability to care for myself even better as we shift gears into a time where I don’t have to be all things to all people all of the time. Because of 2021, I feel equipped and battle-tested for what comes next. I don’t feel afraid of the process and experimenting now feels like second nature – an adventure to learn to adapt to the moment I’m in. My hope it that you will come to feel that way about it too, and I would love to hear about your adventures in experimenting and discovering alignment.