Nine-year-old Michaela Munyan, is CEO and sole seamstress of an unincorporated operation. Michaela had learned to sew hair scrunchies in an after-school program, so when her school was shut down because of the coronavirus, she did something constructive. She found a pattern and made a mask. Then she found a YouTube video about batch sewing and taught herself to make roughly 50 masks in two hours, a fraction of the time it was taking her to sew a single mask before.
Perhaps like no time behind us, the time before us asks us to live the line from John Wooden: Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
Nothing stops us more effectively than our own limiting beliefs. If you believe that something is true, you can almost always find evidence to support the belief. If you believe the time before us is keeping you from doing something, look again. Notice what the time before us is allowing all of us to do….
That is what Michaela did.
While at the time of this writing I am still doing remote sessions only, I am still available to support folks that way.
Let’s look at the way everything holds its opposite:
The event of I lost my job is on a continuum from, “I cannot support myself and others who depend upon me” to “I have wanted to go out on my own for a long time.” In the middle somewhere is probably, “I am not sure what I can do but I need to do something.”
From my October 31, 2019, Beyond Mastery Newsletter article titled: Disappointment, Sometimes we need ways to support ourselves through disappointment until we can see the gifts. You may find tapping’s universal reversals can provide that support. (The reversals are included in the article.)
Of course, the time before us offers some disappointment, every time does, but opportunities are hidden in plain sight in your heart right now.
In Hope and Resiliency: Understanding the Psychotherapeutic Strategies of Milton H. Erickson, MD, a lot of attention is given to the ability to affect a person’s subjective experience of time. Working with an amputee who was struggling to accept the idea that he had only one leg, Erickson used age regression and had the man ponder how he might adjust if some time in the future he had an amputation. Reorienting him in time, and discussing the situation hypothetically, the man was able to develop a solution for how he could deal with the current situation.
Richard Bandler followed up the familiar consoling comment, “Years from now we’ll probably look back on this and laugh,” with, “Why wait?”
It is vital for us to believe we can do something about the situation.
Erickson sometimes used a slight change in perspective to initiate both forward progression and time distortion… suggesting, “Instead of looking at what you’re doing, look at the ending. How can you make it better? How can you make it more of what you want? How can you make it more lasting? How can you make it more productive?” (pg. 179-180).
From all of this, Steve de Shazer devised what is called the miracle question, “If you woke one morning and discovered that a miracle had occurred and your problem was solved, how would your actions change?”
If you haven’t yet, take some time to project yourself forward in time and look back on the time before us now as the past. Notice the things that truly have meaning. Pay special attention to the subtle differences in choices you can make now that bring benefit to yourselves and others long into the future as well as today.
The journey of change is this point. The beginning point must be where the need exists right now.
Just like Michaela did, you are able to develop the necessary insights for you to look back and see how you made it better, more lasting, and more productive.
Use your future resources now….