Space to Come Home

Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. (Source unknown, often attributed to Viktor Frankl)

If you poke an amoeba, it will contract out of self-protection - a survival response not to be overridden. If will do it 100 times if you poke it 100 times. There is no space to consider another strategy.

We all have auto-pilot responses with roots that go back a long way. We learn our patterned responses from navigating and surviving a constellation of family systems, overlaid with the society and culture and identity we are ushered into. We understand fast what is safe to express. What isn’t. What we can express and own and what needs to be disowned is a sorting that happens at our earliest ages.

The sophistication of what we figure out, at the age we do it, is extraordinary. It speaks to the deepest,  most primitive bio-engineering we have to preserve belonging. At any cost. Even and especially if the cost is disallowing and cutting off the parts of ourselves that we learn are not welcome or safe with our caregivers. Gerrymandering our own being.

We then become ‘adults’ and mistake these autopilot responses for who we are. The most meaningful transformations of the people I work with is not that they become different people or an idealized version of themselves. It is when they come off of auto-pilot to put a spacer between stimulus and response. Actually it’s the astonishing realization that a space is possible. The discovery and freshness of a space to choose, exploring new ways of being. I recently attempted a visual of this concept for a client. (forgive the art, I went to business school and think in MS Office)

With practice and the radical courage to deepen self-awareness, the space widens. In this space, our unique gifts can come forth and we can be present to life as it is. The world needs each of our gifts and the power of our freedom to choose and be intentional about how we will show up. What brings you and your gifts most fully forth?

The possibility of growth and freedom might beckon some people into a self-improvement campaign. The irritating truth is there’s nowhere to get to. You’re already there. It is the fierce compassion to remove and dismantle what covers over your gifts. And the courage to come home to yourself.

Can you fight the urge to run for another day.

You might make it further if you learn to stay.

-          The Eye by Brandi Carlile