As a transplanted Texan, I keep a special play list of singers from the area of the state where I live: Los Lonely Boys, Mary Gauthier, Lyle Lovett, Eliza Gilkyson, Marsha Ball, The McKay Brothers, and many more. Recently a friend introduced me to Darden Smith, who performs here in Austin from time to time. One of Darden’s songs was on my mind this morning as I sat down to write this March newsletter to share with you. The song is called “Drowning Man,” and this line especially resonates with me today: “As long as there’s hope, it’s like a rope thrown into the hand of a drowning man.” Not only does the sentiment of this particular lyric strike me today, but also the whole idea that we all have statements that stick in our minds in a way that we can pull them out and use them as a life line for ourselves. I have a friend who has a statement that she says every time her life is thrown into chaos by some unwanted surprise…”I’m going to make a plan.” Another person I know who works in high tech has lost a job four times in the past eight years. He says, with each job loss, “I can always go lay block at a construction site,” something he did to put himself through college. A dear friend who has had a health setback this past year with two major operations and numerous other procedures lives by the words, “I know the Holy Spirit is with me.” Another person I know reminds himself and his wife when they have unexpected troubles, “We have to have radical trust.” Many statements that we call clichés became just that because they are used so many times by so many of us to buoy ourselves up: This too shall pass… Sleep on it and you’ll feel better tomorrow… Love conquers all… I am not alone… One step at a time… Life is not a bed of roses…

All shall be well…

When I wrote Tough Transitions, I included a section on how, when we are having to reorganize our lives during a tough transition, we can thrown ourselves a life line through the words we repeat to ourselves I called the section, “Talking Your Way Through a Hard Patch”:

Talking Your Way Through a Hard PatchReorganizing can be discouraging at times. As soon as you step out and do something different, old fears return or you find even more ways to be disoriented. In fact, it’s not uncommon to find yourself right back in the kinds of Responding experiences in Section 1, with emotions haywire and assumptive world unstable. So now you have a double task: to keep moving forward in Reorganizing and to deal with recurring experiences of Responding. And this is what progress looks like? you may be prone to ask. Yes, as paradoxical as it may seem, in spite of the backsets and overlaps of sets of experiences, you are moving forward in creating a life consisted with the changes brought by a tough transition.

Albert Einstein once said that some of the most elegant things in the universe are the simplest. I think of his statement when I remember how effective certain things I say can be when I’m going through a hard patch during Reorganizing. What do I mean…certain things I say? I mean those truisms, sayings, quoted lines, pieces of poetry that work like buoys when I’m sinking down into discouragement or despair.

We all know the power of the negative version of this suggestion: if you say you can’t, you can’t. I always mess up. There is no way out. Nothing is going to work. Try saying those kinds of things a time or two and you’re ready for a hole in the ground as your permanent residence.

What about the opposite?

Is it possible that by saying something that makes sense and means something to me, I can support myself through a difficult situation? How about that wonderful Ghandi quote, “Full effort is full victory”? How about a mantra like “You never know when the Divine will break through?” How about “Hail Mary, full of grace?” Or Scarlett’s “Tomorrow is another day?” A friend of mine banks on “As long as I’m still breathing, I can change.” Another keeps asking herself, “What is possible now?” I heard a great speaker a couple of weeks ago say that two questions spur him on as he moves into his 60s: “What do I want to learn now and who can I find to teach it to me?” My Aunt Frances who lives in the country down in Georgia scales back her activities when they get to be too much by quoting the old saying, “If I don’t watch out I’ll have a lot of irons in the fire but none of them will get hot.”

It doesn’t matter what the words are just so they are powerful. Each of us has our own. The important thing during the challenges of Reorganizing is to remember to use them.

As we move into this coming month, we are bound to have days when things don’t go right and we are discouraged or bothered or upset or confused or stymied. Let’s ask ourselves what are the statements we can use that will uplift us or give us strength or provide some guidance and direction. What truths do we believe that, if we remind ourselves, will be a positive mantra to repeat to ourselves? I think of one for myself that rings true for me over and over again…You never know when the Divine will break through. Isn’t it a gift that with “just words” we can throw ourselves a life line?

Love,

Dr. Elizabeth Harper Neeld offers wisdom and practical insights to anyone whose life is in a time of transition, change, grief and loss of any kind. As an internationally recognized and accomplished consultant, and author of more than twenty books - including Tough Transitions and Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World - she is committed to work that helps lift the human spirit.