Have an Awkward Day!

“Have a great day.” “Have a good day.” There’s just too much pressure on good and great. I’m all for results and achievement but I have watched the whole ‘good’ and ‘great’ thing kill any possibility of learning and growth. Why? Because learning is messy, learning can be ugly, learning is downright awkward.

I’ll put it simply. Without letting yourself be awkward you won’t learn anything worth learning. When babies learn to walk they totter and wobble and fall and get up and for some reason we don’t call this awkward—we call it adorable. But this is the blueprint for learning everything. We totter and wobble and fall down and get up. And we need to see it as just as adore-able. We need to adore that awkward part of ourselves. We need to adore it more, or adore it at all. Awkwardness is the sign that you are actually doing something different. If everything is going smoothly, it’s a good bet that you aren’t changing anything or learning anything new.

This is true for new skills, but especially new behaviors—and adults hate being awkward in front of others. And this dislike of awkwardness is especially difficult when the very thing you need to learn has to do with interacting with others differently. You can’t learn to have a different way of talking to others without doing it in front of other people. Bummer, huh?

If you want to learn to be more honest, or to ask for help, or to assert yourself more you have to really, really, get in to the whole awkward thing. I mean you have to jump in with both feet and wiggle around in it. You have to love awkward.

The good news about human interactions is that perfection isn’t actually the pinnacle. Repair is. In studies of securely versus insecurely attached infants the differences in caretaking wasn’t that the caretakers of securely attached infants were doing a perfect job connecting with their infants: they made as many mistakes or misses as the caretakers of insecurely attached infants. The difference was that the caretakers of securely attached infants went in for repair after the miss. They sought to reconnect—to soothe—to figure out what went amiss. The caretakers of insecurely attached infants did not. Being in connection with others isn’t about saying it right all the time. It is about miss and repair. Miss and repair. Miss and repair.

But tolerating miss and repair is about tolerating awkwardness and staying in the moment long enough to say it again, to ask a question, to admit your confusion. To stumble in another’s presence and survive it. Give yourself permission today to stretch and do something new. You have to tolerate the miss and repair with others--and you have to do it with yourself too. Let yourself off the hook--be kinder to yourself when you get frustrated. Totter and wobble and fall down and get up. Remember that you are adorable. Have an awkward day!

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2016

This Change Thing Sure is Wobbly

“Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

For someone who teaches about change for a living, I certainly can get wobbly during big transitions. Change is all well and good when it is happening to other people, but hey, when it’s mine, I just want to slow it down or stop it altogether.

It doesn’t matter whether it is change that I have worked hard for or sought out—at the moment of shifting plate tectonics I look around for the nearest thing to grab on to—the oldest habit, the most familiar protection, the fastest way back.  I want solid ground—even if it is exactly the solid ground that I have been diligently working to move away from. Why does the new place always seem like it’s less solid than the old place?

Part of it is just the way the brain works—the familiar is easier because it requires less attention from us. Even ‘bad’ familiar. We know it, we can use autopilot and we don’t have to pay attention or use extra energy.

And if you add trauma to the mix: the new is the unknown and if there is anything a trauma survivor is more against, it is this: being caught off guard. And the unknown is entirely a world where you can get caught off guard. So once we are on the road to the ‘new’ we begin looking for the exit.

The problem is that the anticipation of change is never actually the same as the actual change. The anticipation of it is usually way worse—the anticipation is what has you turning around mentally in your mind the way I did on the high dive when I was five. You imagine the change, the long trip, the new job, the loss of the relationship, and you panic that there is no solid ground, and you believe that you are up in the air with no where to go.

But actual change is different. If being caught off guard is the kryptonite for trauma survivors, the feeling of surprise and new beginning that can come with change are actually one of the strongest medicines for healing. Those moments that you can’t predict, where you get to experience a new part of yourself, often an untraumatized, unpracticed part of yourself—these are transformational. They shift parts of your being. They help you knit back together, and become sturdy in ways you can’t imagine.

These moments of new beginning can only happen when you let go of an old way, an old habit, and old belief. You have to let go, and trust the fall. You have to let go and feel wobbly. You have to let go and not know for a while. Oh, I wish I could tell you this were easy—but I can’t. The letting go is quick—the wobbly-ness—well, that can last a while.

But the truth is almost all of us have witnessed these moments in others and cheered: the moments of first steps—whether children or foals, the moments of taking the training wheels off of the bicycle and watching them go, the moments of your teenagers confident grin as they head in to a big event. All of those are wobbly moments, but they are also beautiful moments, strength gaining moments.

The problem with the metaphor of the caterpillar is that in the metaphor, it happens all at once—you go from caterpillar to butterfly and the change is complete. And I think secretly, we all believe that if we were doing this change thing right, that this is exactly how it would go. I’d go from flawed and awkward to a beautiful creature with wings.

But really, we are all made up of hundreds of these metaphorical creatures who are all at different stages of change. Some parts of us do have wings, which we often forget. Some parts of us are wrapped up tight, transforming on our own time. And some parts of us are still poking around looking for the right twig to attach ourselves to. We are all of it, and it’s so hard to love all of it. To hold that if we want to feel our wings, we are going to have to let go of the old branch.

© 2016 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD

New Notebooks.

First day of school pictures. The bright shiny faces. The anticipation. The excuse to buy new notebooks. I have been so jealous.

I have spent more than 30 years of my life as a student, teacher, professor or coach—which means that for most of my life, the real New Year began in September and I can feel the pull each year as the summer draws to a close.

When you aren’t on an academic schedule, there is no restart. There is no infusion of the ‘new.’ No way to come at the problem with a new view, a new team, or as an ‘older, wiser, version of yourself.’ In the academic world you get to start your year in September after a summer of gaining back some energy and connections with friends, family and nature—you actually have the resources to tackle the old thing in a new way. In the non-academic world they give you a New Year in the dead of winter following a long string of holidays. You aren’t so much interested in a fresh start as you are in a really long nap.

I was especially envious of the ‘first day of school’ pictures because this week I was feeling stuck about a project that has been long underway. I was wrestling with the problems that come midway through a big project and I wanted some of that ‘start up energy’ that kids get every single year.  A new school year acknowledges change and growth and a shift in understanding. You get the reassurance that something has shifted. You get to start again.

And in big projects, or big struggles, in grown-up lives, there aren’t always opportunities for a new start—and in fact, that’s not really what would be best. We need to, as one rowing coach shouted at us once, finish the race you started. But we all need fresh energy sometimes. And we all need to see how much change has happened. And we all need a way to bring a new view to places that feel stuck.

So I decided to listen to my desire for new school year energy. No I couldn’t start a new year. But I could do the next best thing: buy a new, bright notebook. My colleague and I decided to head into the store next to the hotel, buy a brand new notebook and take the project we have been working on for a long time, and start with a new blank page. We each took a series of questions that we usually ask the people we work with, and we became beginners again. We let the blank page allow us a fresh start—not from the beginning, but a fresh start from where we were.  An afternoon with a new notebook and the ability to have a new conversation were enough. A simple low-tech, high yield intervention. 

A new notebook is magic. For less than a dollar, you can still start again. You can ask new questions, or old questions. You can write or draw or scribble your way back to your center—and your excitement. Notebooks allow for messiness and scribbles and cross-outs. They allow you to play again with ideas. They require that you use your hands in old fashioned handwriting—they connect your body to your brain.

So let September bring a new start to whatever you are facing. Let it bring its energy for beginning and growth. Grab a bright, shiny, new notebook—and be a student of your own work and passions again.

© 2015 Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD

The Sacredness of Constancy

“Talons gripping the edge of the nest
wings spread, gauging the wind
the young osprey pushes off,
soaring.

With each practice flight,
the young bird returns to the nest
and places at his mother’s feet,
one twig.

Every evening
in the dark, bright, quiet
of the moonlight the young bird
sleeps.

While his mother,
taking his twig,
builds a nest in
his heart.

So when he flies away
wherever he lands
the young bird
is home.”

— Gretchen Schmelzer

Up here in Maine, the tides go out, and the rocky shoreline appears and then the water comes back in, right up to the shore. It may be a small thing in the grand events of the world, but there is such solace in that constancy—in knowing that as you watch the water go away from shore, you also know it will return. It is a twice-daily event, which adds to the experience and learning of the constancy that nature provides. The moon disappears from view and it comes back. The sun disappears from view and it comes back.

The very best of parenting is like the constancy of the tides. Children are their own force of nature. It is the sacredness of constancy that helps hold them and shape them. You are the tides for your children. You are the air.  You are the sun and moon that their world revolves around.

Constancy isn’t cool, or hip, or sexy, or most importantly, marketable. “Hey, let me sell you a ticket to watch the tide roll back in over the course of hours!” Constant moments aren’t Facebook postings: The First Day of School, Graduation, Soccer Championships, Recitals. These are all wonderful and I personally love to see the pictures whether I know you or your kids or not: there is such joy and humanity in those photos. But these aren’t pictures of tides, they are pictures of special events: like meteor showers and rainbows—the colorful moments of life that occur, but you catch them and enjoy them when you can.

I can market Disney and make you feel great about being the kind of parent who takes their kid to the Magic Kingdom. But there is no equal marketing for you getting the 5th glass of water that night. Even if that 5th glass of water is actually the thing that will become part of the fabric of your daughter. Even if that act is the nutrient all children need. Much like there is marketing for Sugar Cereal and Junk Food and not carrots.

The sacredness of parenting rarely shows up in pictures, it’s hard to share on Facebook, it’s hard to see when you are in it. The sacredness of the everyday—the mundane, routine, constant all-of-it—that is what makes the warp and weft threads that create a person. The sacredness of the everyday of parenting is what makes up the fabric of who a child is, the self and worldview they rest in, the blueprint for relationship they will carry with them.

There are no pictures of you putting a Band-aid on arm that actually doesn’t have a cut on it. Of picking up cereal, or socks, or Legos off the floor. The endless laundry, dishes, trash. There are no pictures of the hundredth viewing of ‘Frozen’ or reading of ‘Goodnight Moon.’ The seventeenth math problem. The tears after a fight with a friend. There are no pictures of bedtime after bedtime, and breakfast after breakfast. Of the wrestling matches of putting on socks and finding shoes and NO I WON’T WEAR THAT COAT. Your ability to shepherd all of these things are the tides that come in and out.

I have such a perfect image of my niece as a toddler, all wrapped up in a towel after a bath at night, sitting on my sister-in-law’s lap. She was just hanging out, her wet hair slicked back, pink cheeks, sucking on her fingers, her blue eyes looking out, but not all that interested in the grown-up conversation around her. This was one of those sacred moments of childhood—where it was nothing special—to the outside world--but it was everything special to her inside world. This is the sacred everyday act of parenting. The absolute building blocks of safety and security and contentment and confidence. This was just the end of bathtime, the beginnings of bedtime, the transitions of the everyday. But they are the bricks of healthy capacity—put thousands of them together and you have a foundation that can hold anything.

The very definition of this constancy is that you can take it for granted. You believe in its existence utterly. I don’t worry whether the tide will come back in. I know it will. I don’t worry that the moon will reappear. I know it will. And the constancy you provide your children is something that they can and should take for granted. I am not talking about material things or that they will never learn to pick up their own Legos. I am talking about the constancy of asking for help and hearing a response (even if that response is age-appropriately telling them they can do it themselves). I am talking about the constancy of nighttime after nighttime of good-night, and morning after morning of good-morning, of bath, books, and bed; of lunch boxes and walks to the school or bus stop; of someone who listens again and again to the same story, the same movie, the same knock-knock joke. Of whatever it is we will figure it out.

Your super powers are your indestructability and your ability to show up over and over again. What makes your work important are the thousands and thousands and thousands of small threads that you weave around their heart, their soul, their growing being. This is what makes constancy sacred. You are building a space in their heart for this constancy—for this ability to hold the world and themselves. You are building this constancy in them so they can hold the rest of the world--which so often isn’t constant. Like the poem of the Osprey above with each mundane, routine, sacred constant act, you are building a nest in their hearts that they can return to for strength and comfort for the rest of their lives.

© 2016 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD