Shifting without shame

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” - Rumi, tr. by Coleman Barks (Image by Hans Braxmeier)

A friend has two daughters in elementary school. One of them loves to revisit her earlier childhood — pictures she drew, early attempts at spelling, and photos of herself. She has said that she wishes to go back and be a baby again “so I can see how cute I was and how much everyone loved me.”

The other sister, however, feels uncomfortable with her former self. Her past work makes her cringe. “I was so stupid,” she says, laughing and rolling her eyes.

It can be interesting to bear witness to how we’ve progressed in our lives, but it can also be painful. Our memories of our experiences might not match the actual evidence, forcing us to consider the possibility that our perceptions might not be truth. In fact, we might see that we were completely wrong about something — we had an incorrect idea, made a mistake, or misread a situation.

In order to avoid this conflict, some of us shy away from examining our ideas at all. If being wrong is intolerable, we stick to beliefs and stories about ourselves that allow us to continue to approach things the way we always have, even if it doesn’t serve us well and might even be holding us back.

I have observed that this is an obstacle to growth for everyone, no matter how old they are. The dogged refusal to adopt a new idea (thereby making the old one “wrong”) is one of the factors that keeps people using ergonomically painful working positions and pencil grips, investing in detrimental relationships, making foolish career decisions, and drinking crappy tea and coffee.

If we are convinced that changing means we were wrong — and that being wrong is unacceptable — we won’t change.

A couple of years ago, I faced a crossroads like this when I handed off my music school, Eclectic Music, to the capable hands of Jennifer Acker, who is now executive director. I had known that it was time for a change — that’s why I stepped down — but it was still uncomfortable to watch the change happen. Things that I had worked so hard to create were being dismantled, and decisions that I had made were being reconsidered. I had to learn to not take it personally and to accept that — what!? — I didn’t know everything.

Even though it was a blow to my ego to see things change, I came to understand that my contribution had still been valuable. I was able to feel a sense of compassion for my former self. I had done the best I could with the resources I had at the time, and that was enough.

In order to allow Jen to do her best work, I had to stop justifying and rationalizing. I had to stop telling the stories of how it was back then and why I made certain decisions. It was no longer relevant. We could all move on.

Now that Jen’s been at the helm for awhile now, it’s been so exciting to see the team and culture she’s created and the fresh energy flowing through the organization. I feel no shame or regret, only pride and delight in how Eclectic Music has progressed. It was well worth the minor trauma of change. And when I look back at where I was five, ten, or fifteen years ago, I might raise an eyebrow at some of my choices, but I can still be proud of the legacy of all of that hard work.

Now I have to look at the next place that I might be resisting a necessary shift. If we’re lucky, we will constantly be confronted with ideas and circumstances that call into question that which we believe to be true. We can make a choice to cling to the way we’ve always thought, the way we’ve always done it, and the the stories we’ve always told about ourselves, or we can let go and make peace with the fact that we were “wrong.”

In fact, there’s a better way of framing that story, too — one that is beyond the binary of wrong or right, and instead views life as a journey ever onward and upward, in which we expand our perspective as we grow. We see more of the picture now, and we can enjoy and appreciate the growth that represents, thanking our former self for the work that got us to where we are. That cycle will never end.