Embracing Change
This month, we invited Samira Siddique, a naturopathic herbalist, women's health advocate, mother of two, entrepreneur to share about her journey in navigating change.
The most helpful thing for me in learning to embrace change was to stop trying so hard.
Whenever CHANGE showed up, I’d make a beeline for the Positive Psychology section in the bookstore, work hard on changing my mindset, all while dealing with crippling fear and anxiety peeking into the abyss of the unknown. Eventually, time moved me along. Until the next CHANGE and the cycle would start again. Rinse and repeat.
But the last 6 years have been extra special, with life serving up – a divorce, a breast cancer diagnosis, gruelling cancer treatment, my father dying, the end of another relationship, a breast cancer recurrence, gruelling cancer treatment round 2, the loss of my business, moving to a country I never wanted to live in, and now caring for my terminally ill mother.
With each CHANGE, I was forced and humbled into an ever-deeper state of surrender, of uncurling my fingers from the cliff edge and letting go. Each CHANGE shed another layer of my conditioned response, the impulse to assert control, to somehow ‘work’ with what was happening, to be positive, to be a player in the game.
By the second cancer diagnosis, there was no ground to stand on, no resources to draw on. The only place I could be was in the now. My life became about each moment and only that. Releasing all effort, even the seemingly helpful, and opening to the spaciousness of the present moment, I discovered there are infinite resources. In many ways, this pandemic with the chopping and changing of restrictions has been a tremendous gift for us all to know what it means to surrender.
The Buddha taught that everything is impermanent. Aren’t our lives at their most fundamental, simply a single moment, followed by another, and then another? We are in a continuous cycle of little deaths and rebirths, released from one state immediately to another. What seem like plateaus or stable trajectories, or mundane routines are illusions. Change is life itself.
Coming to a deep acceptance of this truth, observing it every day, recognising it, learning to be at ease with it, appreciating it as it is without judgement allows for grace when CHANGE comes again, as it inevitably will. The perspective shifts from ‘this is happening to me’ to ‘this is happening’. Moving us more freely into the rebirth and all the possibilities it holds.
Yes, there is loss and at the same time, infinite potential to create. Holding space for both liberates change from being a binary force - good or bad, positive or negative and empowers us to move through life whole and with much less suffering as our minds are not clinging to things as they ‘should’ be. A fluidity and flow of presence emerges, giving us the best chance to respond in a healthy to ourselves and others.
Growing awareness in this way using mindfulness takes time. Here are two other practices that can help to ground and recentre when things feel rocky.
When you feel overwhelmed or anxious with change, in that moment, stop whatever you are doing. Close your eyes. Observe your thoughts arising from the situation. And one by one, release them, let them go, see them drift off, float away, like balloons into the bright blue sky. Take three deep intentional breaths and slowly open your eyes.
Another practice is to grab a pen and paper and list down only things you know for a fact are unequivocally true in that moment. It’s a revealing practice and you quickly realise how much precious energy you are giving to a narrative that seems so real and yet is not based on reality or the here and now at all.
Most importantly, we need to hold ourselves ever so tenderly with compassion as we birth new forms, new wings to take flight.