Guest Posts, courage

Change is supposed to be good, right?

November 3, 2016
change

By Lisbeth Welsh

If you want something to change, then you have to make a change.  And that’s what I did.  I made a massive change, uprooting my life from Las Vegas and returning to LA.  After almost 2 years in the neon desert, I (thought) I was ready to return to my beloved Southern California.  To be back near the ocean and the beach and away from the blistering heat and soul-less sin city.  And so I moved.

I am fortunate that I currently have a job that I can do anywhere so there was no big new job to pin it on, no date of any relevance just a lull in my schedule that gave me an opportunity to pack up me and my dog and reposition us back ‘home’.  But coming home has not been so easy.  My friends and sense of community are here but my family, are not.  They’re still thousands of miles away in the UK.  My prior home, is managed by a rental company who have out priced me in my rental budget since I left.  So, not for the first time in my life I’ve had to pick myself up like a random little pin and drop myself in the middle of a map and begin to rebuild and reboot my life.

I lost my grandmother a week after the move.  Oh, and I left a relationship behind in Vegas too.   So everything that gave me a sense of security in LA is different and with the passing of the last standing strong matriarch of the family, let alone the departure of my significant other, the best description I can give you is that I feel like someone cut the chain to my anchor and it’s this crazy disconnected floating unsettling feeling.

It always sounds so great when you tell other people how you’ve lived in London, LA, Las Vegas and now you’re in the process of relocating back to LA but the truth is with all that bouncing around you belong everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.  You have bases and lives in every city but the people you leave each time you move, move on with their lives without you.  So coming back, everything is the same yet different and everyone welcomes you back but they’re kinda busy too.

And here’s my biggest problem, my change in location is not the only change I’ve made.  I am in a massive period of transition.  Personally, Professionally, Spiritually. Romantically.  In every element of my life, I am changing.  I know, who isn’t right?  But I made a huge commitment to change when I signed up for a life coach 3 months ago.  I was already making strides in this way, but this commitment to an intense program in terms of my time, my accountability to another and of course the huge financial commitment made me step up everything ten fold.  And it’s been amazing.  I’ve gained huge clarity.  I can tell you absolutely everything that I know for sure I no longer want in my life.  I can tell you mostly what I THINK I want now. (Clue: It’s nothing that I have)  And if you catch me in quick fire knee jerk reaction Q&A, I can tell you with real certainty all the things I DO want.

And this is all great but there’s a huge dichotomy I find myself facing.  Almost everything in my life is built from a time that I was a different person.  My reality and the new me have not quite caught up to each other.  Our abilities to manifest what we want are so powerful and that’s what I’ve done continually throughout my life.  But right now aside of the fact that the old me and the new me agree on wanting to live near the beach, I’ve made my massive change to incite the change I want and I’ve arrived to find it’s not here.

So what the hell universe? I did my part, where’s the bit where you co-create and work with me?  And honestly, I’m struggling with it.  The depression and the anxiety that I had managed to break up with and put in a box under the bed have escaped and are sitting quite comfortably with me on the couch right now.  So here I am, sat in my cute new home in Venice, half a mile from the ocean, exactly where I had planned to be and I want to vomit with anxiety.  I am armed with more tools and personal and spiritual growth than ever before.  All my routines and meditations and yoga that has kept me grounded, calm and focused for the last year are here and none of them are doing shit for me.  At 3am this morning, I was trying to meditate myself back to sleep whilst my insomnia just laughed at my efforts and woke me again 2 hours later.  I am exhausted. In 2 weeks I’ve moved house, had a death in the family, gone through a break up, had 3 job interviews, taken 2 trips for my current job and whilst I’m staring down an exciting period of transition and change, I feel closer to a nervous breakdown than anything else.  I tried to see a clairvoyant (one who has read for me many times before) and she sent me away.  Virtually pushed me out of the door of her house telling me my anxiety was too high and she couldn’t talk to me.  She gave me another appointment a few days later, which she called an hour before to tell me not to bother coming because she couldn’t read for me that day either!  What insane energy am I putting out that she has refused me twice?

So then I think about all my newly gained knowledge on the laws of attraction, and creating and allowing and I get more anxious about what exactly I’m blocking for myself or repelling or what negativity I’m pulling in because for some reason, in this time of transition that’s seeing me supposedly move closer to my goals and realize my dreams, I am utterly crippled by anxiety.  And everything I’ve been doing for the last year to help and maintain my grounded Zen self is part of the reason it’s spiraling more and more out of control!

So my question is, what do you do when you know all about taking massive action to incite change but rather than it being an exciting time, it’s becoming the most overwhelming unbearable time you can remember? When you know that what you focus on is what you will find but all your brain can think of is how nothing is right and how you don’t know what to do to fix it?  When you have all this information but your brain is betraying you at every turn.  I’m saying my incantations and my affirmations.  I’m working on changing my thoughts at the most cellular level.  I am attending a workshop on depression that comes at the perfect time since I quit my antidepressants 3 months ago and do not want them as part of the new future I am creating for myself.  Plus, I truly believe that as Tony Robbins says, until my blueprint and my reality match up, I can take as many pretty pink pills as I like and I will STILL be depressed.  So yeah, what the hell universe? All this work, all this change, I’m trying here.

But then I had a moment of thinking that maybe I need to just stop for a second.  A house move, a death in the family, a relationship break down.  Any one of those things on their own is stressful.  I’ve had all 3 in a ridiculously short space of time.  So maybe instead of fighting the anxiety, I need to be a little compassionate and patient with myself.  Maybe if I can find that and sit with my anxiety and breathe and move through it and let it wash over me, I’ll find an acceptance and peace on the other side of it that will just about allow life to happen.  Maybe until I say goodbye to all this sadness and grief then I can’t make room for all the stuff the universe is storing up to send me.

Maybe patience is the key here.  I took massive action and a leap of faith and if I stop and think for a second, was life really going to be exactly how I wanted my realized dreams to be right away?  Is it my unrealistic expectations of the timing of everything that is the problem rather than reality itself?  Einstein is quoted as saying that “the only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen all at once”.  Apparently he was really, really smart.  Life is a process.  We all know this.   I’m still working towards my dreams and will be forever, because as the great lyric goes “When you stop dreaming, it’s time to die.”  Growth is necessary at all stages no matter what you achieve.  To always be learning and developing in some way is part of the human condition of being alive.  And maybe that’s the point I need to make to and for myself.   The fact is that I’ve changed, I’ve made a change and rather than looking for an instant result I need to embrace the transition and journey that this change has started.

I took control of my life and created this reality for myself but actually as I sit here and look at my puppy sleeping next to me, as I plan to wake him and get in the car and ride the half a mile to the ocean to go and breathe and connect with mother nature and attempt to ground and calm myself that way, I realize that I’ve not just created turmoil in my life but I’ve created a little slice of my ultimate dream and I’m so very fortunate and grateful to be here.  It isn’t perfect, I have a lot of grief and pain to work through.  For my Grandmother, for my relationship, for the home I had built for myself in Vegas.  For all that I am leaving behind.  But I have a new home now.  In a place that some people can only dream of and whilst I don’t know what’s coming, I need to trust that the universe is supporting me just like she has supported me in getting here.  I need to trust that the work I’ve done and the changes I have made are co-creating the best possible future that I’ve been working so hard on moving towards.  I’m not there yet but if I can ride it out and sit with myself and keep my focus and my breathing steady then I may just get there sooner than I think.  I’m anxious and that’s ok.  Maybe I can begin turning that anxiety into excitement.  Maybe standing still for a second and letting everything settle, to rebalance and come together will put that anxiety back in the box it belongs in. Maybe if I can give myself a little break and soak up all the good stuff that’s here, maybe then I’ll be able to create the space for the Universe to show up for the co-creating of my new fabulous life.   To say goodbye, but acknowledge the new and say hello.

And as all these thoughts begin to run through my mind, as I begin to return to love, compassion and patience for myself, as I see and hear the ocean in my mind and know I’ll be sat with it very soon, the anxiety is already passing and I start to realize that life is never perfect, I’m working through the process and it really just might be ok if the only thing I did today was look at the ocean and breathe.

Lisbeth Welsh is a music industry executive, who’s bounced round too many cities and secretly works on her writing dreaming of that beach house and life out of the rat race.

Join Lidia Yuknavitch and Jen Pastiloff for their signature “Writing & The Body” Retreat in Portland March 17-19 by clicking photo.

Join Lidia Yuknavitch and Jen Pastiloff for their signature “Writing & The Body” Retreat in Portland March 17-19 by clicking photo.

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