Timing Is Everything
How often do we recognize that timing is everything?
Hitting traffic on the highway, gathering people for a meeting, the beauty of a blooming flower: the list of possibilities wherein ‘timing is everything’ is infinite. Obviously, some things require more convergence than others. The photo above reveals the terrain that in just a couple of weeks would be obscured by the leafed-out trees. The fresh snowfall also added to the visibility. It took a couple of tries to capture the photo as we drove through the wooded mountains.
How many times have we heard that there is a window of opportunity? Opportunity for personal change is an exception. We can decide to respond differently from one moment to the next. We can choose a deep breath and pause, rather than allow our emotions to rule us.
Change is Constant
We are never in a state for more than the present moment. The most successful people in the world are able to change their state by intention. Happiness is about happenings, but we can choose to control our response to events. This was news to me when I got out of my trafficking situation. I couldn’t have imagined being able to control how I feel, or even behave, for that matter.
If you have high Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) like me, change is scary, and intentional internal change is excruciating. Last week, I wrote about how new growth in nature is often red. I feel like new growth, personal or professional feels red and raw. Childhood is full of dramatic change. As adults, we can slow the roll of change to some degree, but change is a constant in life.
Status is never Stasis
Child abuse, especially child sexual abuse (CSA), is a core violation. Our core identity is marred. It’s often difficult, if not impossible to separate the things that happened to us and who we are as children. Our brains are literally unable to do so. We experience trauma in the core of our brains, in an area called the amygdala and surrounding structures called the limbic system or “lizard brain”. It governs emotions, memory integration, and neurochemical responses.
Our limbic system must communicate with the thinking brain, memory centers, and language development areas of the brain for us to change our state by intention. CSA and high ACEs causes the amygdala to shrink and inhibits interchange with the cerebral cortex or thinking part of our brains. Even with an ideal childhood, the development of executive reasoning that happens in the thinking brain doesn’t reach maturity until our early to mid-twenties. So, for abuse victims, it can take longer or require intensive instruction.
The good news is that a momentary status is never a permanent stasis. We can change inside and out. We can change our state and environment. Again, this is simple to say, but it isn’t easy for most people. Thankfully, our brains are ‘plastic’, meaning they change.
New Pathways
We can learn new things at any age. Practicing new activities or a new language or new responses to events or experiences requires developing new neuro-pathways in our brains. Think of your brain as a mountainous terrain. The nerves are like trees. Negative thoughts are bare and brittle, like the ones in the photo above. They don’t cover the core.
As we dwell on positive, productive, creative, generous, and grateful thoughts, we develop fuller connecting branches. The neurons literally grow thicker and weave together creating new pathways that enrich us and multiply to provide cover for the emotional core of our being. It takes intention, practice and time.
One of the most important thigs I’ve learned in my half century on the earth is that new pathways can be good or bad, but we can change direction at any moment. That is exciting and liberating. Decisions have consequences, but many can be reversed or mitigated by carefully evaluating how we got to where we are, what needs to happen for things to change, and implementing steps in the right direction.
Timing really is Everything
In our busy, hustle and bustle lives, we are often distracted from the most important purpose of our being. We are human beings, not human doings. I hope that by reading this, you are aware of this present moment, the fact that everything can change, and you have more power to transform your life than most people realize.
Take some time to look at life, as good as it is, and ask if you are your highest and best self. Are you in control of your emotional, mental and physical state? Sometimes life happens to us, but we can also hold onto the attitude that life happens for us.
In every moment that we are fully present, we can practice being our best selves. When we fail, we have another chance in the next moment. As long as we are breathing, there is hope for a better time.