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Misery or Adventure? Creating New Realities One Puddle at a Time
As a course leader for The Coaches Training Institute, Sam House travels globally to train individuals in the Co-active Leadership Model and the Co-active Coaching Model. As co-founder of Polarity Pathways, Sam coaches people and offers workshops emphasizing conscious awareness of emerging polarities in all situations. Sam is a Master Certified Coach and engages executives, professionals, and teams in the process of creating richness and meaning while reaching excellence.
After many years of yo-yo’ing on the fitness/fatness seesaw, I am becoming more consistent in my practice of nutrition and fitness. (We’ll see whether this new approach lasts, but there is a shift occurring that is allowing me to move towards a healthier and trimmer body for the long run.) To that end—and in an effort to reduce my carbon footprint—on Monday I rode my bicycle five short miles to attend a business meeting in the next town. It was a nice hot late summer afternoon and it felt good to ride instead of drive.
During the meeting, it began to rain gently. By meeting’s end, it was dark and raining quite heavily. Upon stepping outside and seeing the rain coming down, my first thought was, “Oh my, this sucks! I don’t want to ride home in the dark AND the rain!”
Other attendees of the meeting, aware of my situation, offered to give me a ride or expressed how sorry they felt for me. There was a voice within—buoyed by the voices without—that felt quite justified in feeling miserable, upset and put upon that I would have to ride my bike home in the dark, while getting thoroughly soaked by the pelting rain. This familiar place belonged to old hero, victim, and martyr voices within, all wrapped up in one. “Well then”, this voice said, “I’ll just have to suck it up and ride my bike home in the rain, dammit!” It would give me another story to add to a long list of similar stories about how hard and miserable and difficult my day—no, my life!—has been.
But wait, I thought, I have a choice in this matter!
Drawing from lessons learned in the ever-present dance of polarities, I quickly found a new “reality” to inhabit and experience as I rode home. While I no longer needed to consciously go through the polarity process that I describe below because it happens quite automatically now, I want to break down the process of shifting this reality, for the benefit of perhaps serving you in your life.
Here’s the polarity: Pole #1 says “Riding home in the rain sucks! That’s the truth. It IS the reality.” Hmmm. What might be another “reality”, represented by another pole in the polarity? Introducing Pole #2: “Wow, on a hot summer’s night, I get to be cooled by a rain shower as I head home. I also get to experience my boyish nature and enjoy being thoroughly soaked as I look for every puddle to ride my bike through. I get to ride as an 8 year old!”
Each of these poles has an upside and a downside. The downside of Pole #1 is related to the victim-like misery of riding home in the rain. What is its upside? Let’s call it caution. Pole #1, in the best sense, is concerned for my well-being and wants me to take care of myself so that I don’t encounter misery or, god forbid, have an accident. The upside of Pole #2 is: messy, wet adventure. The downside: carelessness and a disregard for safety.
Upsides talk to each other: When the cautious voice of Pole #1 and the adventurous voice of Pole #2 weave together their points of view, what emerges is a beautiful Third Way: “I get to ride home with the adventure and abandon of an 8-year old, while making sure to be safe at every moment. Yay!”
May we all learn to create new, life-affirming realities from situations that otherwise have us feel mired, stuck or…miserably wet!
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Ariane Burgess
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