Growing Pains

I have been thinking recently that it is not only those unambiguously painful and distressing life changes that can cause us to recoil and retreat like a creature under attack; sometimes we are equally resistant to the kind of changes in our personal or professional lives that are clearly beneficial.

To give an example, a few months ago I left my job in London and moved to Poole.  This is not something that happened without a great deal of planning and effort on my part; the fact is, I had wanted to leave the capital and start a new life on the coast for almost two years before I was finally able to move in January this year.  In order to achieve my goal, I determinedly applied for a wide variety of different jobs in the south west.  At one point my determination to move was so great that - frustrated by the lack of opportunities in my area of professional expertise - I started applying for almost anything and everything; this included some frankly quite bizarre career options (given my lack of genuine interest or experience) such as Wedding Planner and Census Collector!  Then in August 2009 I met Alejandro (who coincidentally happened to live on the south coast) and my desire to get out of London intensified threefold; already disenchanted with my stressful, City lifestyle, our  relationship provided the incentive I needed to make the dream of moving south a reality.

In view of the strength of my desire to leave London, not to mention the extent of my struggles to achieve this goal, you might well imagine that I would have been on cloud nine when I finally landed a great job working for a prestigious charity in Poole.  The reality of the matter is somewhat different. Within a matter of weeks of packing my bags in pursuit of a life by the sea and my personal vision of happily ever after, I suddenly hit a wall of self-imposed resistance; although invisible to the outside world, this wall was as real to me as any tangible obstacle and I walked straight into it - slap-bang-wallop! 

To some extent, we are all creatures of habit and I was undeniably facing several major changes in my life: moving to a new city, starting a new job and making the transition from being a part-time (weekends only) to  full-time wife; but, I had not fully appreciated just how much of a creature of habit I had become!  Although it is common knowledge that change of any kind causes stress, I have always prided myself on my adaptability and resilience, consequently I hadn't expected this new stage of  my life to be so difficult.  My adventurous spirit and bold nature have blessed me with a natural ability to adapt to unfamiliar surroundings and, just as I can acclimitise myself to other cultures and climates, I have also adjusted remarkably well to other changes in my environment and circumstances. The greater part of my love of travel stems from a thirst for adventure and new challenges and I  have never been afraid to venture into unknown territories - in fact, it used to give me quite a buzz to arrive unaccompanied in a strange country during the small hours of the morning!  This innate flexibility and adaptability have helped me to deal with periods of great uncertainty and change throughout my life. In fact, the decade between my twentieth and thirtieth birthdays were characterised by a period of quite dramatic and acute transition: I became a mother, I separated from the father of my child, I adapted to the challenges of raising my daughter alone, I coped with the trauma of her father’s sudden death, I remarried, I adjusted to life in a foreign country and I dealt with a difficult divorce.  I certainly seemed to live life on fast-forward during those years and, at times, it felt as though my feet barely touched the ground!

In light of the above,  my difficulties in adapting to the new life that I had worked so hard to create and the strength of my resistance to my new surroundings totally took me by surprise!  For the first few months following my departure from London I became quite depressed and, far from embracing the challenges that my new circumstances offered, all I could see were the negatives.  In fact I spent quite a lot of time during those months curled up in the foetal position; much like the proverbial ostrich but with my head under a pillow rather than the sand! Fortunately the story doesn’t end there and five months on I am living my new life to the full.  I have learnt a lot about myself during this period and I am grateful that I did not allow my fear and resistance to stop me from making the most of all the wonderful new opportunities I have been given.

I think that it true to say that the most of us are resistant to change and often it is easier to stay in a situation that we are not particularly happy with – quietly and often not so quietly grumbling about all the dissatisfactions that we feel – rather than taking the necessary steps to change things for the better. My recent experiences have made me aware of how easy it is to get stuck in a comfortable rut; not because we are necessarily happy there but because we are fearful of the unknown. It is a deeply ingrained human tendency to cling to what we know, even though it may not serve our happiness, rather than risk exposing ourselves to the challenges and risks of doing things differently.

In the last few months I have realised that although I have adjusted remarkably well to the profound and sometimes traumatic changes that life has thrown at me, I have not responded so well to the less dramatic, but necessary, transformations that have recently come my way.  But, by virtue of a shift in perception, I am learning to be more patient with the uncomfortable, and sometimes negative feelings, that these changes in my personal landscape can ocassionally still provoke.  I have come to realise that these feelings are nothing more than “growing pains” - after all, sometimes it hurts to give up our old, familiar ways! - but they remind me that I am alive, that I am moving forwards and that I am stepping up to the challenges of my new life.