Embracing the “Messy Middle” of Change
Authored by Tejal Patel Tarro
From the very start of my career designing and facilitating learning journeys, one of the most requested topics was, and continues to be, navigating change. Ironically, while for the last 15 years I have been teaching practices to help others handle uncertainty and ambiguity, I continued to struggle with it myself. I guess it’s true what author Richard Bach states, “We teach best what we most need to learn.”
My ongoing struggle is because this deeply human challenge has so many layers that continue to unfold, revealing more nuances of where I can strengthen my own competency. So many of us, myself included, experience significant discomfort with change. Whether we experience it personally or professionally, we yearn for quick answers, clear processes, and concise steps to move through change quickly and effectively.
However, I have come to see that while there are frameworks that can help us understand the process of change and practices that we can use to be more responsive to situations we encounter, to truly develop deep competency requires a fundamental shift in our relationship to the most uncomfortable part of change: the uncertainty and ambiguity of our desires.
Uncertainty can be seen as not knowing if you will get a desired outcome
Ambiguity can be viewed as not knowing how to get a desired outcome
I am currently navigating a significant change that I desire in my life that can perhaps illustrate this shift in relationship to uncertainty and ambiguity. For over three years, I have desired to express myself much more intimately and vulnerably through writing and performance art. This change feels challenging because there is no clear destination, let alone a clear path to get there. I am constantly contending with (i.e. failing and learning) the physiological, emotional and mental shifts necessary to make this change sustainable. Let’s dive deeper…
The Physiological and Emotional Layers of Change
On a physiological level, the primordial part of our brain is wired to get triggered by uncertainty and ambiguity, creating the basic desire to survive by finding safety. These brain centers perceive any change as threatening, even though most of the uncertainty and ambiguity we encounter in change is not immediately life threatening. When triggered, our bodies naturally get flooded with hormones raising our stress levels and causing us to react impulsively to find some sense of relief through deflection or distraction. Deflection could look like blaming others or being fixated on finding an immediate solution, and distraction could look like busyness, scrolling endlessly or various other numbing escapes.
I know deflection and distraction well as it relates to the change I desire. It is much easier for me to blame my circumstances (e.g. health challenges impacting capacity, competing responsibilities impacting focus, perceived lack of skills impacting motivation) than to see that my fear of failure is causing me emotional distress. It is much easier for me to distract myself through food and screen binging than to see that the possibility of success is causing me just as much emotional distress.
Shifting our relationship to change on this physiological level starts with understanding that we can see a higher perspective and respond better to change when we are in a more relaxed state.
A more easeful state calms the primordial parts of our brain and activates the executive function of our brain; this is designed to help us better discern subtleties within uncertainty. Instead of getting lost in deflection or distraction, we can learn to sense the stress in our bodies and find ways to reclaim peace despite not having all the answers to our desires. Some of the physical practices I use regularly are:
Moving my body
Breathing deeply
Listening to music
Sitting in nature
Laughing with friends
The most profound shift has been learning to have patience with my humanness — to allow myself the grace to sit in the unknown for extended periods of time as my body regulates.
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Emotionally, uncertainty and ambiguity of our desires can trigger unresolved fear, wounds and even trauma. I do not even begin to offer advice in this area, as so much of our emotional reaction is based off our unique lived experiences and conditioning and is a deeply personal journey of healing. All I can do is share my own experience. For many reasons, some known and a lot probably unknown, one persistent fear of mine is that of abandonment. Any sense of uncertainty or ambiguity will trigger this fear that I will be left without something that matters to me, such as purpose, resources, opportunities, experiences or even friendship.
For the change that I desire, I fear that those who have known and valued me in the ways I presented myself in the past will abandon me as I express myself in new ways. I can’t say this wound is completely healed in me, and perhaps may never fully be, but what I can say is that I am learning to manage it so that it does not direct important choices as I navigate the ambiguity of this change. Author Elizabeth Gilbert, in her book Big Magic, speaks of how she manages by telling her fear: “You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote.”
One of the biggest shifts in terms of my emotional relationship to uncertainty has been owning my emotional experience without judgement or resistance. Poet Khalil Gibran states “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” I love this verse because I can visualize a light as understanding (deeper insight), the shells (limiting perceptions, stories or beliefs) that enclose the light, and the capacity to own pain (acceptance of emotional distress) as the process of breaking the shells. Through self-acceptance for my emotional states, I break limiting thoughts, freeing deeper insights that can empower more positive and sustainable change.
With this calling to write and perform, one major challenge has been to discern the desire to create content that reflects the depths of my soul from content that satisfies my egoic needs for validation. This discernment is a constant upheaval of some very unappealing parts of my nature. For a long time, I would deny, resist, criticize or force myself to change this part of me that desires approval. I have recently realized that those judgmental reactions just reinforce my egoic needs, but when I accept that part of me exists with self-compassion, the need for approval seems to soften to a point where I can relate to validation with playful humor.
The physiological and emotional shifts to change are empowering practices, but the most profound shift we can make is our mental relationship to the desire to change itself. Many of us have been conditioned to think that once we get to some destination or goal, once we’ve realized a desired change, then we can relax in a steady state. This belief that some steady state in the future exists is a fallacy. Change is constant and thinking that peace will be found through the attainment of some desire will only keep us discontent. Desire can be a great motivator for change, but fixation on achieving a desire in a specific way is just mental entrapment.
One of my favorite insights about uncertainty comes from poet Maria Rainer Rilke, “Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” To me, this feels like freedom from the grasps of believing that we can only be okay when we have attained our desires.
From Discomfort to Joy
As I continue navigating my desire to become an author and performer, I can find more joy in the process of becoming itself. Every layer of insight, every new poem stanza, every dance lesson, every perceived stumble is an insightful part of the change journey. I have often taught people that the key to change is mastering the “messy middle” of change. The shift for me has been not just to master the messiness of the middle, but to be in love with the “in-betweenness,” because this liminal transitional space is all we truly have.
I have seen and even experienced that these shifts in perspective can open the doors to sustainable change not only on a personal level, but also on a collective level when practiced together with accountability. Instead of forcing some fixed desire for improvement and growth, which leads to greater stress and disengagement, we can unfold an evolving desire for transformation which is empowering along every dynamic step of the change journey.
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