Wellspring Counseling, LLC

Messy Middle. I was recently talking with a runner who had just completed her first Marathon. She made an observation about marathon running that captured my imagination. She said, “The middle part, say 10 miles of it, is where it can break down. That is where the work is. A mental strategy is needed to stay focused.” Boredom. Fatigue. Loneliness. Doubt- these were the things needling her. And exit ramps abound. There are ways to abbreviate your goals, settle for less and end the race early. She was able to keep at it because of a phrase she had picked up in her training, “Stay in your mile.”
In a flash I was drawn back to Bruce Feiler’s work, “Life is in the Transitions.” He acknowledged that the greatest work of transitions is what is called, “The Messy Middle.” It can endure for multiple years and bears out the greatest effort in going from one puncture point of charge to fully entering another. And again in Heidi Priebe’s book, “This Is Me Letting You Go,” she writes “We have to be patient with ourselves as we move through the parts in between where we’ve been and where we are going. We have to let the chasm motivate, not dishearten us. It is okay to not be there yet.”
How easy it is to mis-interpret all those bumpy phases of change as defeat or dismissal or the abbreviation of what we are focused on achieving. And how tempting it is to choose an exit ramp inside the mess of change that takes us right back to what we were leaving or what we haven’t fully learned. Inside the change is a long stretch of mess and pavement. Inside that turbulence and boredom and fatigue, we’ve got to “Stay in our mile.” One foot in front of the other while we continue to believe in the goal of change and the outcome of it. Trusting the process and leaning into the time it takes to get there.

Savor. September affords us endless opportunities to practice savor. And our five senses: Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste and Touch can lead the way. I recently read Gretchen Rubin’s book, “Life in Five Senses” and it captured her quest to live each day drenched in what her senses could magnify and bring into focus. As she traveled each day with greater sensitivity to what her five senses could observe or collect, she discovered a different kind of vitality or richness to her days.
The five senses have also been identified as a means to bring us back to the present moment and help us zoom in on just where we are when our minds want to travel either back to the past or much forward into an uncertain future. Stopping right where you are, right now and collecting 5 Sights, 4 Sounds, 3 Smells, 2 Tastes and 1 Touch can bring you back to center and help abbreviate an anxious moment.
I challenge you to engage this wonderful capacity we have to take in the world around us and be comforted by it.

The butterfly effect is a scientific concept developed by Edward Lorenz. He studied weather data and determined that a small condition change can produce a significant change in weather outcomes. This concept became known as “The Butterfly Effect” suggesting that something as small as a butterfly’s wings flapping could reshape weather patterns.
In a couple weeks, we will begin to see Monarch butterflies here in Central Illinois passing through on their 3,000 mile migration to Mexico. Their tiny and delicate stature makes such a feat seemingly impossible. It takes 3 generations of butterflies to make that passage but even still, it is astounding.
As you come across them, on a walk to work or being outside exercising or gathering with friends, be reminded that something that small can alter weather systems. We don’t have to move mountains in our lives to see change. We can make tiny improvements that guide us into new territories of course altering outcomes.

We are all at mid-year. Good time to check in on your peace. How are you doing? Are you at peace with yourself? Etty Hillesum, a Dutch survivor of a concentration camp in 1943, is quoted as saying, “Ultimately we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace within ourselves.” How is that going? And have you begun the permission process in that claim? Seems like most of us try to get there from the outside in. We try to order and re-order outside circumstances hoping that will deliver the peace we crave. . . But Etty invites us to think differently. She asks us to restore our peace within ourselves.
How? I believe some of the how is inside Mahatma Gandhi’s reflection: “Peace is not the absence of conflict but the ability to cope with it.” Part of restoring peace within ourselves is about distress tolerance; it is about returning to a state of elasticity- where we bounce back from stressful events and circumstances and come back to a place of center or calm. Permission comes in the form of recognizing that we first have a relationship with ourselves prior to and previous to any other relationship we are engaged in. Go there first and then discover that the peace you carry is contagious.