Update on the splinter saga (take a look at my previous blog if you have no idea what I'm talking about): It is gone! The doctor took a look at my son's finger and said that it still looked okay enough to keep encouraging the body to remove it on its own. We got sent home with instructions to keep soaking the finger in warm water with Epsom salt, as we had already been doing. The doctor said "I'm sorry this probably isn't the answer you wanted," but keep doing what you're doing and give it more time. I was actually very pleased with the doctor's answer. I just wanted to know that my son's finger was okay and that it wasn't infected. I wanted to be sure I didn’t need to take a different direction. We kept on course for a few more days, and finally the foreign body made its way out. My son's finger is back to its beautiful normal self.
This theme of keep doing what you're already doing has appeared in many of my sessions with clients recently. So often when we are trying something new, attempting to adopt different thoughts and beliefs, making efforts to show up in revised ways for ourselves and our important relationships, we can start out gung ho with hope and then fade into discouragement when we're not seeing our intended results immediately. It is easy to entertain thoughts that what we're doing must not be working...determinations that it's all for nothing and things won't change...beliefs that we must be off track and need to pivot quickly to something else - so we switch gears before our chosen approach even had enough time to work its magic.
We can lose patience in the mundane and the repetition that comes from choosing to commit to something without seeing its impact yet and then applying it over and over, even when we don't feel like doing it. We want quick gratification and positive feedback that what we're doing is working. The transformation lies in the little moments, the tiny shifts, that accumulate and end up creating meaningful change in big ways.
This week my clients and I received the gift of perspective that comes from the passage of time. For many of my clients, enough time has elapsed in the trying of new things that I was able to remind them of how they used to feel 6 months ago, 6 years ago, when x, y, z would happen. I got to remind them that the old actions and thought patterns of the past actually hardly ever make appearances in their life present day. I got to pinpoint and celebrate all the incredible work they have done, and bring their attention to the places in their life that exist as proof of their efforts (especially when the effort felt like blind effort). I think we all just want to know that really we're okay. We're okay on the paths we've chosen. We're okay in feeling frustrated and doubtful when we don't initially experience our hopeful outcomes. We're okay in the struggle that it is sometimes to be human. We're okay as we are, and life will always circle back around to show us just how amazing and okay we are. Sometimes life just takes longer than we’d like.
You know when you look at a tree or a flower in early spring, and one day there is no bud to be seen, but the next day you might start to notice the pre-flowering swell at the end of the stem? Then another day you see with certainty that there is definitely a bud, and a flower will bloom soon. Plant your seed. Provide it with water, sunlight, and tender attention. Don't rip it out of the ground prematurely only to destroy those fragile roots that will get stronger with each passing day. Keep doing what you're doing long enough for something wonderful to happen, and trust that the flowers will blossom.