The Power to Act

Often the word winter paints an image in some minds of clean white snow, children excitedly building snowmen, and couples skating hand in hand on a perfectly frozen blanket of ice.  Growing up in the North East, however, caused me to have a different view point. When I think of winter, I only seem to remember the hardest part of it – the dog days of winter.  Even thinking about it brings me angst, with the endless months of unbearable cold and the gray color of snow after it had been mixed with dirt and stripped it of its beauty.  It dragged on, and on, and on.  As a child winter was simply a fact of life.  I moved through the dog days of winter neither loving it nor hating it, but simply tolerating its grayness while impatiently waiting for spring.  That is how I’m feeling right now and I wonder what causes this Texan to feel this way. Why so gloomy and overcast? Where is the spring I long for and with it the return of a sunnier disposition?

One of the many gifts I received while attending the Newfield Network, an Ontological Coaching School in Boulder, CO, was that I got to work with Julio Olalla in the area of moods and emotions.  Like most who attended, I thought I knew moods and emotions because I’ve lived them. What I found out was that I knew nothing about the moods that were running me; especially the mood of resignation.  Moods, if I thought about them at all, were accepted as the way things were:  I’m down, I’m happy, I’m sad, I’m confused.  All were experienced as facts.  With Julio and Newfield I began to understand them as a place to explore and when needed to shift them to a more productive mood.  They were not static states, but things that I could consciously shift.  Julio was like an astronomer telling us about the night sky; he focused his telescope on the area of moods and emotions and the night sky became alive with new possibility.

How do I know that the mood of resignation is at play?  It sucks the sunshine out of the sky and replaces it with hours, days or months of grayness.  There is no happiness, no spark, and certainly no brilliance of snow.  I experience resignation as the dredges of winter wearing me down. When it’s at play I feel like there is no hope or possibility for things to ever get better. I feel flat and gray; anything but a powerful place!

At the Newfield Network I learned that wherever resignation resides there is no possibility.  It was easy to see resignation in hindsight; I was resigned to the limits of being a child, of low expectations for me and of winters that went on forever.  It seemed impossible however, to identify things that I was resigned to in my life today. I was happily married, had a good leadership coaching practice, had the security of money; and yet there was something out of sort with me.  I had moments of happiness, but no one ever described me as sunny.

When I shifted the question to “What do I believe is impossible for me?” the flood gates opened. I was resigned to small expectations, never speaking a second language, painting a masterpiece or being a national figure; to name a few.  But were those assessments really true? I knew I couldn’t be the President of the United States, but that never was something I truly wanted.  I had to admit that there really wasn’t any real reason that I couldn’t do or be any of those things I secretly wanted. I had the requisite intelligence and inherent talents.

By denying the possibility of achieving these things, I realized for the first time that I was unnecessarily narrowing my world and living a much smaller version of myself that was possible. I didn’t have to choose to put my time or talents in achieving these things, but if I did choose to focus my treasure I could.  With that awareness the world as I knew it expanded.  Something exploded within me; I felt more powerful, more expansive.

I’ve learned over the years to celebrate the catching of the fish called awareness; in this case what I’m on lookout for is the mood of resignation. When I’m aware of its presence, I can bring it into the light of day to explore and validate  the story that I’m telling myself so I can make a conscious choice.  It’s in the light of day that the gray skies can part and the balmy days of spring can emerge. Yet awareness is just the beginning.

In Part II we will learn how I said goodbye to resignation; at least in one part of my life!

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