Surge Forward or Have Patience?
“Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.”
Because we live our lives in a constantly changing landscape of influences, we're always learning about the possibilities that are open to us, and the new ones constantly appearing through the creativity and interactions of the billions of other people who share the planet with us. The flow of ideas through which we move makes it possible for us to be learning things without even realizing it. Our minds are continually synthesizing everything they take in, giving us access to the building blocks with which to come up with our own new ideas. Often we disregard such ideas without even fully vetting them because of old programming left over from the past; this slows down our own progress, as well as the progress of humanity as a whole, by depriving it of your potential contributions, which is why it's a good idea to stop sometimes and take stock of what you really want. You may find that your old goals no longer satisfy. When you really open your mind to what would excite you most to work toward, you may find that it's time to make adjustments.
If you never do this, you may find your energy and enthusiasm tanking without realizing that it's because you're not moving toward anything that feels truly inspiring. For instance, I have a client I recently worked with who had been starting to yearn for a particular change, but hadn't really admitted this to him/herself until we sat down together and there was some dedicated time and space to say, "You know, I think what I really want most right now is this." It turned out to be something quite achievable, and within a week, everything was being arranged in a new way to support the stated goal. This person was relieved and energized, and couldn't wait to do the work of actualizing the new plan. And isn't that where we'd all like to be—enthusiastically meeting life every day and enjoying the tasks we take on?
On the other hand, it's also very possible to be vigilantly on the lookout for new opportunities and feel that they're not showing up, which can be particularly frustrating when we see how quickly everything is changing around us, including for other people we know. My best recent story about this is my own. I had been looking for ways to make a change in a particular area of my life for what felt like way too long without feeling like I was getting anywhere—despite doing everything I could think of that seemed in line with my desires. When a new opportunity finally did arise, I had an epiphany about why the process I'd gone through to get to that point was actually going to end up being important and useful in ways that were previously unforeseen.
Without telling the whole long story here, I'll just say that that the new state of things included a resolution to something old and very thorny that I'm still not finished dismantling, but that will feel like a great accomplishment to me when I am. It wouldn't sound all that splashy to everyone, but I feel like I've gained higher, more satisfying ground and a deeper understanding of the good that can come of something that has been extremely difficult for me for a long time. I see a bigger, and quite expansive, picture now of where this fits in the context of my life, and there were times when it seemed like this story would never make any sense. All this is really to say that sometimes the only thing to do is persist, because the alternative is to lie down and give up. If you do persist, the creative, constantly aware parts of your mind that are always working may eventually reveal patterns to you that you did not see coming at all. The moment when it all coalesces can be a gorgeous, stunning thing that is worth the wait. I'm still not super psyched that this whole thing took as long as it did for me, but feeling like it was all to a purpose makes all the difference in the world.
Sometimes one of the hardest things in life is to know whether you should be surging forward or waiting for opportunities to align. This will always be individual and therefore mysterious, something no one else can dictate to you. But I think finding the balance here involves both making space for awareness by reexamining your circumstances with regularity to find what's true for you in the now, and being willing to persist and have patience when it looks like there's no possible resolution to your problems. Things will keep changing, and eventually, those changes will align to help your cause if you're paying attention and ready to seize the moment.
Where in your life do you think you need to reexamine right now and where do you need to have patience? This is a question to ask yourself often. It can really get the creative parts of your mind activated and working for you. You might want to do this with someone else, taking turns talking through both sides of the question. If you try this and have any useful realizations, I'd love to hear about it in the comments section below. I hope you end up with new realizations that keep you moving ever onward and upward.