On the Brink of Change

Are you at your wits end in your job, career, relationship, life in general? Experiencing delays, frustration, confusion, and even a little fear? Well, you might be closer to achieving something amazing than you think.

My last post, On the Verge of Transformation, featured an interview with a caterpillar.  The above video continues the play by play in the life of a caterpillar, only this time from the inside of the cocoon (or chrysalis, if you want to be technically correct). I hope you enjoy it!

Here’s what I said in the video:

My daughter has this butterfly pavilion that we’ve been raising butterflies in. It’s been days since all the other chrysalises hatched.  In fact, we let nine butterflies go out in the garden the other day.  But there’s one that’s still in there, in its cocoon.  We look at it every day hoping that we’ll catch it as its just emerging and it’s still in there.

I know it’s not dead because when I push on the side of the habitat, the chrysalis shakes gently, which is something that I learned they do to ward off predators. And, I can’t help but think how often we feel this way:  we’re in this cocoon, there’s all kinds of change that’s happening, we’re not really sure which direction is up, and we’re the last one. For some of us, it takes longer than others.

If you’re feeling like you’re stuck in the cocoon, I think it’s probably very uncommon.  And uncomfortable.

I read a story about a man who actually saw a butterfly trying to get out of the cocoon and used scissors to try to gently help the butterfly out. The butterfly fell out of the cocoon and it’s body was small and shriveled.  It just kind of stumbled around on the ground and was finally just still.

What this man learned later was that to get out of the cocoon, the butterfly has to encounter the resistance. In the act of bumping up and busting out of the cocoon, the butterfly’s body fills up with fluid that it needs in order to spread its wings and be free and to turn into the beautiful creature that it is.

It’s such a great reminder to us that just when we feel things are at their darkest, and everything’s closing in and you just can’t take another minute of it — maybe that’s when we’re the closest to actually being ready to bust out. And maybe instead of thinking of all the resistance as overwhelming and exhausting, we can think of it as that final push we need to give in order to just break through into something wonderful that’s just been waiting for us.

For more on change and transformation:

The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be (book) 

Busting Out of the Box (workshop)

 On the Verge of Transformation

Taking Your Leap, Part I & Part II

Bridging the Gap Between No More and Not Yet

Are You at a Crossroads?

 

Crazy businessman picture by Stephane Durocher from Dreamstime.

On the Verge of Transformation

Do you ever feel like you are in the middle of some kind of transformation, but not yet clear on exactly where you are going and what form things are going to take?  Speaking from my own experience, it can be a bit unnerving when you are in the thick of it.  You may feel as though you’ll never find your way through.

They say it helps to find inspiration from those who have gone before you.  On that note, the above video, On the Verge of Transformation, features an interview with a caterpillar.  I hope you enjoy it.

Here is what I said in the video:

These live caterpillars came in the mail the other day.  My daughter is going to start a butterfly habitat.  And when they arrived they were really little — teeny, tiny things.  Just a couple of days ago, they started climbing up to the top.  You might be able to see, they are starting to hang from the lid.

And I found myself staring at these guys the other day as they were still caterpillars crawling around, wondering if they had any idea what is going to happen to them — that their whole life as they know it is going to end — and if they felt fear.  And I wonder, if I could interview a little caterpillar, what would it tell me if I said,

“Hey, do you have any fear about what’s going to happen to you?”

He’d probably look at me and say “Why would I have fear?”

“Because everything you know is about to end.”

And he’d probably say, “Says who?”

And if I said, “But you have no idea what’s going to happen!”

And he could say, “Neither do you.”

And look, they are totally surrendered.  If ever there was a position of surrender, it would be hanging upside down while your entire body dissolves into mucus and nothingness and is completely reconstituted — and then to have to find your way out of the chrysalis all on your own.  And yet, they do it all the time.  It’s part of nature.  And they have no fear.

The thought occurred to me that we are always going through our process all the time too.  And we get scared, because we have stories about all the things we are going to lose and all the stuff we are going to suffer at.  Yet, maybe we can take a cue from the caterpillar.  Maybe I can have a little bit of comfort and faith in knowing that just totally surrendering to the process could result in something fantastic and beyond anything I ever could have imagined.

For more on change and transformation:

The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be (book) 

Busting Out of the Box (workshop)

Taking Your Leap, Part I & Part II

Bridging the Gap Between No More and Not Yet

Are You at a Crossroads?

 

Photo by Colin Stitt from Dreamstime.

The Downside of Going it Alone

 

Have you ever come smack up against an old assumption that was just plain wrong?  The above video features a story about a painful lesson I learned years ago when I thought I could (and should) do everything on my own.  It was probably the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done that didn’t involve falling down or tripping over something.

Here’s what I said in the video:

Years ago I worked at a hospital and I was teaching classes to help clinical professionals work through all the changes they had to make when managed care hit.  These people had a lot of change to make.  There was a lot emotion involved.   They had to completely reinvent the way they saw patients and did all the things that they had done for years. There was a lot of resistance.

And I remember I got this idea that perhaps it would be helpful for them to see how others have worked through this.  So I decided I wanted to make a video and I got approval to make a trip to one of the sister hospitals whose staff had already begun making the transition.  I managed to find one of the oldest cameras around at the time.   It was so huge, that the VCR tape actually fit in it. You can imagine the contraption and all the gear I had to carry.

I finally got to the hospital.  We had a conference room arranged.  I managed to coordinate and have all these people show up in this one room.  I asked them questions that got on tape their reaction and their coping mechanisms and their pain – and the way in which they were able to take something that turned everything they knew on their head and work through it.  It was heart rendering.  It was moving.  It was beautiful.

I singlehandedly worked the camera, I asked the questions, I tried to zoom in on people’s faces when they talked, and I spent a whole day doing this videoing.  I came back and I edited it myself. Granted – I knew nothing about filming and editing videos.  I had to use the camera in order to do editing, cutting and pasting with my VCR.

When I got back and had my finished product, everybody crowded around and we put the tape in the VCR and hit play.  I was just devastated. It was horrible.  And I remember watching it and just feeling my heart sink.  Because all those stories that almost brought tears to my eyes as I was filming them – the sound quality was so poor, you couldn’t even hear people talking. The camera was shaky.  The editing was horrible.  And I was just so embarrassed.

That happened years and years ago when I thought I needed to do everything myself and had a lot of fire in my belly,  but for whatever reason, I was very resistant to asking for help. And I learned such a valuable lesson from that. What I learned and how I have benefitted from that experience is that I have allowed myself to let go of the things that I thought I needed to do myself and enjoy working with people that have skills that I don’t, who can get almost even more excited about my ideas than I am — and see things that I didn’t see — to make it richer and allow something to be created that is far better than anything my little mind could ever have imagined.

So here’s my question for you, “What great idea are you sitting on, and who do you need on your team to make it happen?”

 

Picture by Diomedes66 from Dreamstime