When change is in the air, are you a baby steps kind of person or a giant leap of faith kind of person? Or do you dig deeper into the comfort of familiar territory and resist change?
I’m going to share three stories. One is about yoga and a Hindu God, one is about a MacBook Pro, and the third is about an Ikea cupboard. I can already hear you thinking, Which one of these stories is about taking baby steps, which is about the leap of faith, and which is about resistance to change? Well, life isn’t really as simple as that is it? Or is it? Here we go.
Two weeks ago we moved house. As I work largely from home, moving house also means moving office. During the weeks of planning, packing, and unpacking, my very talented web designer, Siobhan, spun her magic and within days of arriving at our new house, my dream store and blog had undergone a major transformation and moved in together in a whole new way at JaneTeresa.com. So I kind of moved house twice, while working as usual at the same time.
These were wonderful changes, ones to fully embrace. The house is more spacious, as is my office, and the website has all the elements I wanted and thought you would enjoy, and more. But even good change has its challenges. In the middle of it all, I had a dream where I couldn’t turn off any of the gas burners on our new stove. The more I tried to turn them off, the brighter and hotter they burned. I woke up in such a fluster, and it was only once I was awake that I could see the funny side. I had relegated so much to ‘the backburner’ of my mind to cope with the move that it was spilling over to the front burners and I was finding it difficult to switch off. So I made sure to find time for my yoga, but that’s not the first story. Let’s start with the story of the Ikea cupboard.
Have you ever noticed that change begets change? I had a lovely big Ikea double wardrobe for my clothes in our old house, and two matching Ikea cupboards for my office. When you’re moving from a smaller house to a bigger house the last thing you expect is for the removal men to look at your new hallway and say, No way! Not only could they not fit the wardrobe and the cupboards into our new home, but my very modestly sized desk – just a small table with pokey-out legs – also failed the manoeuvrability test. All I had in my new office was my chair and a pile of boxes, which brought a smile to my face. Oh dear, I’ll have to buy a beautiful new desk and some better cupboards, oh, and a new wardrobe too. What an opportunity! So off we went to Ikea.
No baby steps, no leaps of faith (unless you count the Allen keys), and no resisting the change. Some changes are inevitable. You just have to see the inevitability as an opportunity and go with it. Change begets change.
Whether it was part of the inevitability or a daft leap of faith I’m not sure, but somehow, right in the middle of moving, we decided to make the change from Microsoft to Apple. I’ve been looking forward to making that transition for a few years, but at the same time holding back, thinking of the time and effort it would take to learn (what I understood to be) a whole different way of working. But suddenly there it was, a brand new shiny MacBook Pro sitting next to my rather clunky looking Samsung on my beautiful shiny new Ikea desk. “Take baby steps,” advised the Apple tutor, when I went for my one on one tutorial. “Use your Samsung for work while gradually learning how to use your Mac. Pace the transition.” I went home, and thought my desk looked so much better with just the shiny new Mac, so I packed up the Samsung and boldly leapt. It was a good move, it turns out.
The Apple move got me thinking. Baby steps are really hard. Watch babies gathering the courage to take their first steps. Perhaps it’s more courageous to take baby steps than leaps of faith. Perhaps it’s more courageous to build slowly and steadily, to immerse in the present moment of every new step along the way, to enjoy the magic of the adventure, to celebrate each step, to embrace change without burnout. Leaps of faith can get you to a wonderful place very quickly but they can also go very wrong, depending on what you put your faith in.
I go to yoga several times a week, and as life would have it, the recurring theme during this couple of weeks, introduced by different teachers, has been the leap of faith taken by the Hindu Monkey God Hanuman. The pared down version told in our classes is that Hanuman was a god who had forgotten his magic powers (it’s a very long story, you can read about it in the ancient epic poem, Ramayana). He didn’t know he was a God. One day he needed to rescue Sita from the island of Sri Lanka (then called Lanka), but there was a whole stretch of ocean between where Hanuman stood on the mainland and the shore of Lanka. But Hanuman was so devoted to Sita that he took a leap of faith, one huge jump, one leg extended out front, one leg extended out back, and he landed safely and found her. He also found his divinity, his god self, his faith in himself, his magic powers, his empowerment, his connection to all that is. Hanuman represents our journey to rediscover our divinity, our greater spirit, to connect with our inner power to overcome obstacles, to have the faith to follow our path.
At least, that’s my understanding.
In yoga, the Hanuman pose looks like this:
Hanumanasana, the yoga pose
In dream work, it’s about discovering your wonderful, magical, divine self, too often hidden or forgotten, buried below layers of limiting beliefs and emotional blocks that hold us back from welcoming positive expansive changes into our lives.
A friend sent me a quote (source unknown) about Hanuman that really says it all, whether you’re talking yoga or dream work:
“Don’t tell Hanuman how big your problems are. Tell your problems how big your Hanuman is.”
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