Moving the Ladder

A post about the Art of Change

When my grandfather was in his 80s, he was (and still is) a voracious reader. Ever curious about the art of living, he spent many hours a day scrolling through old books, reading articles, and perusing the local paper. The only thing he enjoyed more than reading the material was the act of sharing what he had learned with others. I was often a willing recipient.

One day, Grandpa shared that he had become curious about what “old people had to say about life.” He had found an article in which a journalist had compiled a list of “Final Life Advice.” In this article, elders were interviewed and asked the question, “if you could give one piece of advice to the future generations, what would it be?” There were, of course, many powerful answers, and I remember nodding my head often as Grandpa recited them to me. Of all the answers, however, only one has remained in my memory: Move the Ladder.

Some elder, having lived a long and full life and having been asked to pass on one wisdom to the future, answered with a simple phrase. Move the ladder. I remember both my grandpa and I pausing at this one and letting it sink in.

For those of you who have labored on a ladder, this phrase might have already done its magic. Anyone who has worked on a ladder, particularly a long ladder and particularly with some physically challenging work, knows that you have to learn when and where to move the ladder. You know what it is like to be on the top of the ladder and know that you just have a little bit more work to do in a place that is just barely out of reach. You probably also know that critical moment when you recognize that if you just scrambled down, moved the ladder, and then scrambled back up, you could easily and safely complete the task.

Many of us know what it means to not do that. You know the feeling of that moment when you decide to stay on the ladder and reach too far past the point of safety, balance, and skill. Fear speeds your heart rate, sweats your hands, and clouds your mind. You barely manage to do a mediocre job in a very inefficient way. Not moving the ladder means spending a lot of time and energy fretting and trying not to do something stupid. The resulting work is usually substandard. It does not reinforce the desire to do more work.

What This Means in Everyday Life

According to neuroscience, one of the key tasks of the brain organ is to keep your experience stable. The brain wants your life and experiences to remain familiar enough so that you can know how to handle your situation. In fact, the brain will edit out novel experiences and create anxiety or other barriers when you try to do something outside of your norm. This helps you to feel competent and build skill over time. It is also the reason why it’s hard to change even when you know that the changes you are trying to make are good for you. The brain kicks back.

Fortunately, there is another very strong force of the mind that loves growth and novelty.

When we’re trying to establish change, our job is to keep a good enough balance between these forces so that the stability part of the brain doesn’t get freaked out, and the growth part of the brain can enjoy new experiences.

Moving the ladder means simply putting yourself in a position where you can work safely enough and skillfully enough. When working toward a positive change in life, moving the ladder means setting yourself up with the right conditions.

Crafting the Right Conditions

Crafting the right conditions is a creative project. You’ll get to create it, and it will change from there. Below are some conditions that seem to be helpful to many of us

Expect nothing: expectations are not here and now, so we tend to miss the experience of the change. We actually don’t need them. We can hold a vision. Expectation is what happens when a vision ossifies- it becomes hard and stops responding the world. Life loves movement.

If you don’t live up to your expectations, it does not mean that you failed. It means you didn’t do it this time in these conditions. It’s okay. That ladder just wasn’t in the right spot. Move the ladder.

Be gracious: give yourself some support from within. Hold yourself with kind thoughts.

Be clever: we all know that nothing is ever perfect, and change will present its challenges. Knowing this, it helps to be clever about how you deal with it and where you move your ladder.

Be willing: change does take some will. Setting the mind to truly wanting a change is an essential condition. Usually we want to change because we want to come out of our suffering cycles and/or step further into the experience of being fully alive.

Do just enough: this is such an important one for so many of us. A fine and brilliant part of us can envision big changes and sweeping reforms. This is wonderful if you truly have the capacity for it. We very rarely do. Doing just enough means presenting just enough change in just enough doses that you can sustainably do it. These regular small changes, over time, become the new norm. From them, we can grow a stable foundation for those bigger changes we might envision.

Borrow chi: in Chinese martial arts, borrowing chi means that you are borrowing energy from something else that has a lot of energy to give. For our purposes, borrowing chi means that you are borrowing buoyant energy from aspects of your experience that are inherently positive. These small supports can help make big changes. It can be as simple as doing the thing you want to do in clothing you like; doing it in a place you want to go; ; attaching it to something you already do; attaching it to something you’ve always wanted to do; and so on…

Be Community: the time of the lone wolf is over. We are utterly interdependent. Commandeer friends and allies. Seek small supports. Learn how other people do it.

Negotiate: for some of us, it helps to make a deal with yourself. It can be easier for the mind to accept change if you give it a reasonable parameter (e.g. I’m only going to try this for 30 days and then I’ll reassess.)

Include the buoyant energies of play, wonder, curiosity, and heartsing. We can run so fast and so long during a game of tag and never think of it as work or exercise. We can spend an hour sketching a beautiful plant we discovered in our back yard and not even realize that it is a meditation. Curiosity can get us to climb a mountain just to see the other side. Doing what we love can put us in a state where “tasks” don’t exist.

If you would like to sign up for email notifications of new blog posts, please click here.