Don’t blame the lettuce
Always trying to be a better person is not the best way to approach change. What I've learned about giving myself the conditions to thrive.
‘I’m always going to be a better person tomorrow. The trouble is that I’ve got to live with the person I am today’.
This thought came to me as I sit slumped on the sofa surrounded by a pile of used tissues, coughing pathetically, head throbbing, knowing I ‘should’ be resting, but figuring that moving my fingers across a keyboard is not exactly manual labour1. I have spent a lot of my life thinking I will do better, someday.
For me, it is a well worn path of self improvement. It’s not necessarily the wrong path (it is better than self destruction) but it presupposes the need to improve. Now that I’m well and truly in mid life, I’m making minor adjustments to the route to take in some of my existing goodness.
If the idea of inherent worth seems alien to you too, maybe just acknowledging that you have a few assorted good points is a more helpful place to start. I can make a decent cheese sauce from a roux. I can spell the word discombobulated. I can stroke the dog’s ears in a way that makes her do a small contented sigh. I can usually remember where to find the super glue. I can name a few common birds and butterflies. I can sometimes remember to listen first then speak. I can be kind. Maybe I’m not so bad after all?
Well worn paths
When I work with clients in Therapeutic Coaching we often talk about how hard it is to change the default patterns, the hard wiring, the programming, the knee jerk responses to things. It’s absolutely no different for me. I have great intentions to make a change on Monday. Then Tuesday rolls round and I seem to be the same flawed human being. If I mess up in any way, I’m done for. That’s it, over, the week is ruined. No point even trying to do better.
The way we react can feel like a well worn groove that is impossible to escape. We feel trapped and stuck and doomed to repeat the same sequence over and over.
But look at the language we use - it’s very hard and mechanical - like something to be fixed in the computer of the mind.
We are not linear, rational, mechanical beings. These default patterns have kept us safe. I prefer to think of them as desire paths. The shortest way from A to B. The unintended and inadvertent pruning of possibility. The language is much more playful.
A desire path, also known as a game trail, social trail, fishermen trail, herd path, cow path, elephant path, buffalo trace, goat track, pig trail, use trail and bootleg trail, is an unplanned small trail created as a consequence of mechanical erosion caused by human or animal traffic.
Wikipedia
Imagine if we said, not that’s my default pattern or emotional baggage, but ‘oh, that old thing, it’s just my goat track, my buffalo trace, my bootleg trail’. It sounds more friendly, like something we could have laugh along with, shrug off, or change on a whim.
Have a look at this image of a well worn path up a hillside. It looks so much more inviting to put one foot in front of the other than strike off into the scrub or follow an unmarked route. But that’s exactly what we are asking our brains to do each time we try do do something differently. Particularly if the path has been there since childhood.
Photo by Martino Pietropoli on Unsplash.
Fresh paths
My sense is that true behavioural change requires quite a few things:
awareness of the path you always find yourself going down;
acceptance of where the path has led and how it has served you;
deep compassion for the person (you) who is making faltering steps off the path into uncharted territory;
a commitment to keep walking ahead, even if that means straying back on to the old path at times.
It is hard, repetitive, difficult work. I’m sorry to say there are few quick fixes.
Sometimes, methods which help to address an underlying trauma response (such as EMDR, or the Rewind technique and EFT tapping I offer in my practice) can help clients to make rapid and powerful shifts in the way they see themselves and the events that were previously triggering. But the work continues outside of the therapy room and it takes effort to integrate these shifts into everyday life. This typically requires patience, dedication, backsliding, and a huge dose of self compassion.
The classic poem by Portia Nelson sums the process up really well.
Autobiography in Five Chapters
I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost … I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.
II
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place
but, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
IV
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
V
I walk down another street.
— Portia Nelson
How to change
Although this is a lifetime’s work, I don’t want you to leave despondent about the seeming impossibility of change. A different path is possible. Let’s look at the steps I outlined to get there:
1. Awareness
You can’t change what you aren’t aware of. Turning your attention towards your stuck or difficult places is ALWAYS the place to begin (go gently - this may need to be with the help and guidance of a trauma informed therapist or coach). Turning towards instead of turning away is often the hardest step, because we don’t want to acknowledge the hard stuff.
Awareness is also the first step in any small change you want to make. Any minor detour off the well worn path. The more you can bring attention to behaviour in the present moment the more opportunity you have to do something different.
2. Acceptance
Meaningful change doesn’t arise out of shame and self loathing. Shame and self loathing is akin to a freeze state where forward motion isn’t possible. Instead you want to curl up and hide. So as well as turning towards your difficult places, you also need to begin to accept their existence.
However irrational or aberrant the behaviour, it has served some purpose. Often to keep you safe as a child and on into adulthood.
Acceptance isn’t the same as passive resignation, by the way, but that is a topic which needs a whole post dedicated to it.
3. Deep compassion
The most essential ingredient, and often the one that is hardest to find in the moment you need it, is compassion. Turning towards ourselves in any kind of self reflective practice is not all zen like and peaceful. It’s often very challenging to acknowledge how we actually are in the world. This is where you need to find a tiny seed of self love. Or at least self liking.
One route into this feeling is to imagine you were comforting a very dear friend. What words of encouragement night you offer them when they ‘fail’ in the exact same way that you have?
4. Commitment
Clients often ask me for new tools. And I ask them how they are getting on with the old ones.
None of this is a one time only activity. It takes small repeated effort over and over. You will often feel that you are making absolutely no progress. This is not true. Being alive is a heroic act in itself, and to keep striking out along a even a slightly different path is worth celebrating.
Community can help with this aspect, and that is something I’m seeking to cultivate in this space.
“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it - but all that had gone before.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits
Conditions to thrive
Photo by Rachel Reinhardt on Unsplash
It reminds me of when we tried to grow a new variety of a favourite vegetable in our veg patch. Last year it was Pak Choi. It’s something we love in stir fries but we are not keen on the air freighted portions wilting in plastic that you get in the supermarket. We carefully planted out the minute seedlings. We spaced them out as instructed. We didn’t over-water them. We protected them from slugs using beer traps and egg-shells. But we didn’t net the growing plants, and this was our big mistake. Pak Choi is part of the cabbage family and caterpillars love brassicas. We came out one morning to find all the tender leaves had been shredded.
This year, we will try Pak Choi again. With a greater awareness of, and respect for, the multitude of conditions that each little plant needs to thrive.
Whenever you are struggling to make a change, it might help to think of each new neural connection you are growing as a tender shoot that needs great care to become established.
Every time you
attempt to bring a little more awareness to what’s happening in your body and mind
look at what you find through a lens of curiosity, not condemnation
gently whisper one word of encouragement to yourself for trying
keep turning up even though it’s hard
you are giving yourself the conditions to thrive.
If you want to develop some foundational practices to help you to
become more aware of your thoughts
find a sense of grounding and safety in your body
soothe your nervous system
then watch this space, because I’m launching a mini course soon.
It is called Growing Present and it will be available for paid subscribers from the week beginning 22 April onwards. I will share more about it in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a quote that comes to mind from Thich Nhat Hanh:
“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change”
― Thich Nhat Hanh
I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, and that it’s given you pause to reflect upon what conditions you need to thrive. Rather than launching in to a fresh round of self improvement.
To give me the conditions to thrive here (encouragement is essential 😌) I’d love it if you might share your experience in the comments on the app, or in reply to this email.
An aside to say that unfortunately I am still coughing spasmodically and I sound like a nightclub singer, so I am not able to record article voiceovers at the moment. Normal service will resume soon I hope!
Thank you for this, Ali. It’s very relatable and very helpful.
I’ve been having one of those days where I feel like I’m falling back into deep grooves about the way I see myself, so this comes at a perfect time. Considering small things I like about myself is useful, and doesn’t make me cringe like some of the self-love tricks I’ve tried! I can spell discombobulated, too, so there’s something.
This article is beautiful. So relatable and helpful. I find process very difficult and my healing process means I have to sit with the discomfort of improving, going backwards, then forwards, the backwards sometimes in a messy messy way alongside feeling at times "I'm making absolutely no progress" ... but it's the little changes that I visualise now as afew trodden blades of grass in the new path I am forging that isn't really visible yet as a clear path? 🙏🏻
the stone cutter analogy is extremely helpful and grounding in itself ". Ever grateful for your writings 🙏🏻🫶