How will you know that you’re ready to start? Once you’ve planned and perfected and plotted all your goals on a graph, like we’re so often encouraged to do. How will you know you’re ready?

It’s an important question, whatever change or dream or hope you might be facing. (And, life being what it is, it’s pretty rare not to be facing one of these sorts of things…)

So how will you know you’ve done enough preparing and perfecting of the plan - and when it’s time to just take the plunge?

Does the perfecting have a use-by date?

Or is it something you could get lost in the safety of and languish in forever if you wanted to?

Something comfortable, even?

Something that perhaps beguiles you with the promise of being able to predict and resolve almost any problem that may arise – before they appear, of course. (And in a universe of potentially infinite possibilities and permutations, is that even possible?)

I bought a pair of shoes a little while ago. They’re red. They’re great. They were the last pair in the shop, my size and on sale. Perfect.

Well, not quite, actually, because they pinched a bit when I tried them on. But surely not too much. Surely they’d get better with time… I’ll take them.

But when I tried them on again at home (after wearing them around for days with thick socks on to stretch them), and they still pinched, I thought:

“What planet was I on when I bought these?”

And, instantly, I knew:

“Planet Wishfulness.”

Have you ever been there?

It’s a trivial example, but it can happen anywhere – in relationships, in your work, in pretty much any part of life. Wishing that something would fit you, when it just doesn’t … not quite.

For wishing can clash with reality; it can hide what’s really going on; it can get in the way of you making decisions that might be really important to make.

You know those times when the same message keeps on turning up in your life? Over and over? Where you keep recognising the same idea in many different places (and you know you could apply it to yourself)? Well, I’m having one of those times.

And the message is about editing. Cutting back. Slicing off the excess to leave some empty space.

To leave more room for simply living.

(Something in me relaxes even just thinking about it – how about you?)

So let’s have a look together for a moment and see what you might have to gain by losing some things…

Anger. It’s got a pretty bad reputation. And we’re often told what to do with it: be careful with it. Suppress it. Vent it. Override it. It’s like anger’s some kind of volatile, toxic force to be harnessed or defused.

But maybe there’s another way of looking at it altogether.

Maybe you can actually learn from anger. Listen to it. See what it has to tell you. Get curious about it.

The sticker in the photo (above), in a cleverly vandalised train carriage I travelled in recently, has another suggestion for how to respond to anger:

“If anger is present
rove to another age”

So let’s take another look at anger for a moment.

I couldn’t help but smile when I walked past this building in my neighbourhood recently. There’s something beautifully absurd about a sign announcing “OFFICE” above a doorway that’s then been completely bricked-in. I wonder if they get much business…?

Yet what’s not so funny is how you might be doing this to yourself, to your life, at times. How you might be walling-off the very opportunities or happenings you’d like to take place. How you might be sending messages out there – to others, to yourself – that completely, unwittingly, contradict your dreams. And maybe even stop them from having a chance.

So let’s take a look behind the brickwork for a moment and see what’s going on…

I had a set of spare keys cut yesterday, so I can store them at a friend’s place in case I lock myself out. And it got me thinking…

What about the keys to your internal spaces?

The keys to your thoughts, your dreams? Your ups your downs? Your emotional and psychological home. How many people in your life have access to the inner sanctum of you? Who’s got keys?

It’s worth having a look at this every now and then, to assess if your levels of security or accessibility have changed or need updating. To find out if more – or perhaps less – people have access to you than you might have thought (or that you might hope for).

All of this points to the idea of boundaries. About psychological safety and connection with others. Of striking a balance between being locked away in an isolated tower of ‘safety’ alone, or being completely enmeshed where you’re sort of ‘access all areas’ for everyone that happens along.

There’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer for this stuff. It’s just about finding out what’s right for you. For now.

So let’s take a moment just now to ponder…

Have you ever felt sometimes that your life was going ’round in circles? That you were stuck on some broken record? Repeating the same cycles – the same patterns? I know I have.

And it can be frustrating. Dizzying. Maddening. And hard to know what to do about it.

So what are some options?

Well, maybe it depends on how you look at it…

Storytelling seems to be written so deeply into us. We’ve done it for millennia, to capture knowledge and wisdom and heart. Yet stories aren’t only verbal. They’re visceral, too. They’re the lived-out stories of our days.

So what kind of story are you telling with your life?

Where might the story of you be headed right now?
(And is that where you’d like it to go?)

When you pull back from the minutiae and dialogue of the everyday, what themes seem to emerge off your pages? Are there patterns re-visited across time?

And as the author of this particular story, this particular life, what does all of that mean for you?

Let’s delve into the pages for a moment.

“No problems.”

That’s what this sticker on an alleyway wall in my local neighbourhood is on about (in the photo, above).

It sounds like a pretty good proposition… No emotional meltdowns, no relationship dramas, no self-sabotage, no “failure.”

But is it too optimistic? A bit utopian, even? Something to strive for, maybe, but not completely attainable?

Well, a branch of family systems therapy thinks not.

In fact, from it’s perspective:

“the problem is the solution”

So what does this actually mean?

There are enough limitations in this world.

Physical ones, depending on your age and agility and health at the moment. Existential ones, in terms of having a finite lifespan and knowing that death awaits us somewhere. And the limitations that the dominant social norms of society might like to try to contain you with (prescribing what we’re all “allowed” or “supposed” to do or be in certain situations).

So there’s plenty.

Yet do you find yourself sometimes adding to this list?
Creating even more barriers for yourself?
Arguing for yet more limitations and making a watertight case for why you can’t possibly try or succeed or excel?

(Isn’t there already enough holding you back?)

And is it possible to drop that baggage and move on with a little less weight and a little more possibility?