Ah, transformation. What is it, really?
For me, it turns out that it is letting go.
When I started this personal transformation blogging exploration, what I said I wanted to see was how to make some real progress in my life, and to see if radically changing my approach would radically change the results. To that end, I decided to ninja through my entire house clutter clearing in a new way, according to Marie Kondo’s technique. I also decided to join a fitness challenge and shake up my entire nutritional and physical program.
That’s what I said I wanted to see.
I believed it, too.
But now I see that what I wanted to see was both of these things work so radically, so fully, so badass amazingly, that I would be able to astound myself and ideally even help others with my knowledge, my insights, and my amazing progress.
Delusional, right?
I get like that sometimes.
Yet as is the case with oh so many things, what I learned, or what I have learned so far, has been completely different than what I expected to learn.
But first, a brief digression.
In actuality, the thing I love to do most, more than anything, really, is help people grow, help people find and realize their highest wantings, help people realize all that they truly are and can be. I have built my entire professional life around this, have been doing it for decades.
Can I discover amazing secrets and strategies and reveal them to others and help them that way?
I wish.
Given my work as a personal transformation mentor, I should surely know better than to assume that I can find the answer for everyone in finding the answer for me.
As if I could even find THE answer for me half the time.
I needed to let go of that.
You see, what I have learned so far from this experience is the approach doesn’t matter as much as I thought.
My learning has been in the letting go.
For so much of my life I have tried to push things, hurry things up, change things, make things happen.
Underneath all that is a lack of acceptance of the way things are, of course, for in order to make all that effort, there has to be a sense that things do need to change.
But what if instead of trying to change things, I accepted things the way they are, and opened to what is possible, what I might not have even thought of?
Turns out, I did not completely transform my body or my house, although I am happier with the way that both of them feel. It is, as is all of life, a work in progress, an opportunity to learn and grow.
It is also an opportunity to be vulnerable, to be real, to be less than perfect, and to be okay with that.
If I can do that, if I can accept things exactly as they are, let go of an outcome, and just enjoy things as they are, wouldn’t that feel good?
I tried it.
It does.
What I have learned from this experience so far is that the best thing I can do is be real, be genuine, be less than perfect, and be honest about it.
I can grow more myself, and help others to grow, if I show up fully in all of my imperfection and connect: connect with my own heart, connect with the hearts of others, just connect.
Just be who I am in the here and now, and be fully present.
And that counts for a shitload more than any progress I could make on the outside.
Of course I knew that intellectually, but I didn’t feel it as fully as I feel it now. So when I walked in to teach two classes yesterday, I dropped my teaching persona, I connected with my students, and I shared a real and difficult story with them about an ill loved one who is inadvertently teaching me, along with all of life, it seems, to be patient.
I am there with them to help them carve out their highest aspirations and face their biggest fears in order to grow into the best possible versions of themselves. They look up to me as someone who has the answers.
And I do have a lot of answers.
But I also have more questions than answers, and I have a hell of a lot to learn. And it seems like every time I have something completely figured out, life just laughs its ass off at me and I get some new, unexpected learning that I never saw coming.
All I can do is laugh right along with life.
Laugh, and then let go.