Baby bird

I’ve been thinking about how hard change can be. One day I can see myself in a new place that feels expansive and hopeful, and then fall into the judgment of where I am now instead. And I wonder how to bridge the gap. 

I imagine a baby bird’s first attempt to fly, how it might feel to take off - the expansiveness of flight - and then fall. Back on the ground, wondering how to get up again. Unlike me, the baby bird just gets back up. Her instinctual intention is the driving force, as her body gets used to flying. She knows her wings will eventually wake up to what she already knows, as there are millions of years of training present in her muscle’s DNA supporting her flight. She also doesn’t question the fall. She doesn’t get into an existential sinkhole about it, criticizing her competence, or questioning the desire to take flight. None of the meaning-making apparatus is there for her. She keeps trying and falling, incrementally waking up the memory of flight in her wings.

Building competency in real-time.

Notice that I’m not saying that she doesn’t know how to fly and needs to learn it. Because the opposite is true. The knowing already exists in the muscle memory, combining the urge to fly with the appropriate action repeated over time. There’s no question regarding her ability, just readiness and practice. There’s no mother or father bird telling her she can or can’t do it, flapping her wings for her, and coddling her fear when she falls. There are no worried eyes upon her. Just an objective gaze and the inevitability of flight. She either learns or gets left behind. 

But that’s in nature, right? Because we’re not part of nature. We are not animals. We have additional parts and functions of our brain that can see beyond instinct. We feel complex emotions, and bring purpose, intention and meaning to our actions. We bring strategy and critical thinking, questioning, and envisioning. We attempt to control outcomes and judge performance. We’ve gotten so good at exercising the more sophisticated parts of our brains function that we may have forgotten a simple, basic functional truth. That we already know what we want to learn. Some form of it has already been done before us and is present as implicit memory stored in our body's muscles and DNA.

The desire is there because the INNATE ABILITY has lit up inside.

We too operated this way in the early stages of life. When the will to evolve existed without the meaning, purpose, or judgment. We sat up, crawled, walked, and spoke with an inherent will like that of the baby bird. We fell, then got right back up again. 

I’ve come to realize that change happens when we invite the original instinctual mechanism to participate with the intention to change. We all have experience with change. Some successful and some not. We thought about why and how and even drew up a plan for it. We imagined it, tried it, and failed. Then we gave meaning to the fall and gave it up. Felt unworthy, incompetent, unable… I digress.

To bring about change, we need to include the body’s inherent data and ability to support us. We change when we combine the more sophisticated functions of our brain such as imagination, creativity, planning, and strategizing, with awareness of the body’s innate ability to adapt incrementally. By trying and failing and getting up again. When we marry intention and determination with practice, we change. When we move from where we are (objective, instinctual) in support of where we want to be (vision), we build intentional competency in real-time.

Once we add compassion to this paradoxical duo and suddenly, change becomes INEVITABLE.

I’ve been applying this concept and others to my conversations with clients and using them in my own life to create sustainable change.

What do you want to change in your life right now?

With love,

~ Mahshad