As I set up my calendar for the month, I select a quote I’ve found that speaks to me. I write it in my planner and leave space below it to capture phrases I hear or read that speak to me and relate to the quote. I found this practice centers me throughout the month, and helps me be more present in my conversations, meetings, and readings. For February 2025, my quote was: “You will get there—until then, be here. This moment matters.”
When asked what I do for a living, I sometimes respond, “I work at the intersection of ideas, information, and emotions.” Facilitator. Strategic Communicator. Coach. Change Manager. Planner. News producer. I love the possibility of what can be and the use of words to bring them into being. In all these roles I bring with me curiosity (lots of questions), optimism with side of practicality (small goodness can always be found), and a collaborative spirit (everyone can contribute). Even with 30 years of work inand around change, these last few weeks had my internal system on overload. The moments felt heavy. Being “here” in them was something I wanted to escape. Here are the quotes, lyrics, and phrases that that caught my attention throughout the last month:
- In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there
- How can kindness be so radical?
- Anam cara: Soul friend
- God went to quite a lot of trouble to make us all different
- You’re going to live in me forever
- You can dance in the hurricane but only if you’re standing in the eye
- You might make it longer if you stay
- Hold on to the center
- To love someone is to learn to song in their heart and sign it to them when they have forgotten it
- My favorite words are the ones that you’ve said to me – ordinary words that people use every day, unaware how sacred they are
- You are breaking like the dawn – it’s a new day. Become! Become!
- Your soul is an indomitable force
- Action absorbs anxiety
- We refuse to be enemies
- You are becoming
- You are a visitor to this world, from the next
- You are not what you are holding, you are the hands that are holding it
- Whatever is happening right now is everything you have
Whether change is desired or forced upon, it’s disruptive. Disruption wears out our nervous system with a rotation between fight, flight, or freeze. Simple tasks and routine decisions seem monumental. Uncertainty breads doubt and doubt breads fear and fear breads withdrawal (often predicated with outbursts). Basically, a full body fritz.
Even knowing this (with several certifications to boot), it’s hard to manage. And what I’ve found is that “manage” causes me to hold tighter when transformation in fact requires more of an open hand in order to let go of now and welcome – or at least explore – next.
For me, the more things feel out of control, the more I want to control them—or find some kind of “normalcy,” usually a sense of false comfort. On 9/11 for example, after I finally made it out of Washington, DC, and spoke with my immediate family, I couldn’t continue to watch the devasting news. I could feel my internal system begin to short circuit. So, I did the most mundane thing I could think of. I went to the grocery store and walked up and down each aisle buying a handful of comfort foods. This dull routine calmed down my nervous system so I could process and think more objectively.
February was a full-on assault to my nervous system – my brain and heart struggling to process everything around me. So much in my professional life going on, that I couldn’t even figure out what to try to “manage.” As I explained to someone in my industry, I felt like I was standing in the middle of a frozen lake – listening to the cracks and pops around me – safe at the moment, but vulnerable. Frozen, wondering if I (or someone I cared about) would lose footing and sink with the next fissure.
I wanted to manage (cover up and control) my emotions. I wanted to manage the pain I saw in my social media feed. I wanted to manage the unknowns that’s swirled in my head at 3am.
I couldn’t.
My false sense of control slipped away, replaced with a sense of having swallowed a Tickle Me Elmo doll… an emotional ball of confusion, doubt, anger, possibility, incredulity, worry, and panic vibrated inside my body. I couldn’t suppress it. I couldn’t process it. I couldn’t release it.
So, I had to be with it.
To be of service to my community (clients, co-workers, friends, and family), I first had to be of service to myself. This involved sitting with and exploring my emotional ball of goo. It was the only control I had.
I’ve come to learn (re-learn as it’s an ongoing practice) that when I avoid my own goo, then I’m not engaged in a meaningful solution – one that aligns with my values, my purpose, my vision. My emotional vibrations move me haphazardly, erratically, if unchecked and unacknowledged.
So, I became curious about what super charged my emotional ball of goo and what sedated it—and make adjustments accordingly. I began to apply my pragmatic optimism looking for goodness (it always exists if I seek it out) and then discern how I could lend a hand to my community (I can’t control but I can always help). I scheduled time to be with those who bring me comfort and laughs, even in hard circumstances (authenticity is a balm for me).
Yes, the emotions are still here inside me. No, I don’t have clear answers. Yes, the frozen lake continues to crack. No, I’m not sure where to step.
This moment does matter … every moment does. Skimming by it – the hard, ugly, scary, uncertain – reduces our chance to take it all in, wrestle with it, learn from it, and determine how we will take intentional action on it.
What will you do, feel, be, or explore in this moment?
