Some of my most touching moments as a therapist are when clients are faced with a leap of faith, or what I sometimes call the farthest distance we can travel.
How do we set on a life journey when we do not know where it will lead? That question can at times make us question ourselves, or perhaps even freeze us in fear.
It involves trust, bravery, naïveté at times, and not least of all secure attachment or the sense that we are not alone. It also brings up a sense of adventure in me that knows that while I may not yet know where life is taking me, the only way to find out is to take the step.
Making choices and decisions can be difficult, especially when they are hard ones or involve others. I personally am known to have hard time making decisions, always wondering, hesitating, doubting, and reconsidering all the options. For some of us it is the fear of making a mistake. For others it is needing to be sure and a fear of losing all of the other options once we’ve made a choice.
Jim Taylor Ph.D, a sports and parenting psychologist and author of How to Survive and Thrive When Bad Things Happen: 9 Steps to Cultivating an Opportunity Mindset in a Crisis, writes on Psychology Today,
The leap of faith begins with the conviction that you don’t want to go down the path that your current life has been taking you any longer, that your life just isn’t working for you any longer.
And yet it is hard to take that leap of faith when the choice is not so clear and it involves the potential of making a choice that we may later consider a mistake. In a 2019 blog titled Do We Need to Avoid Mistakes, I wrote,
At times, as a therapist, a parent, a partner or a friend, I want to save others from mistakes that I have done. I want to provide answers, solutions, resolutions, shortcuts, and passwords to avoid mistakes. However, trying to save others from the mistakes they may make, or the one I did, and wishing to be able to pass on what I had to learn the hard way, through experiences, is not always the healthy choice.
From a grander perspective those mistakes, while challenging for sure, are what made me into who I am today. I borrow Byron Katie’s unofficial translation of the Sanskrit greeting Namaste into “No Mistakes” from her book A Thousand Names for Joy. More recently, I read a yoga teacher’s explanation of the same idea that I liked stating,
Me being [here] in [this] moment [is] no mistake. All the choices I have made in my life have taught me great lessons that I would never have learned otherwise. There is a lesson in every action, every encounter, every reflection.
It’s scary to jump into the unknown. Most of us will hesitate, take our time, or perhaps be forced into making the jump. In her article 7 Things That Will Likely Happen When You Take a Leap of Faith In Yourself, Mo Seetubtim highlights the positive outcomes that can follow.
Most of us are scared of diving into the unknown, of uncertainty, of unfamiliarity, of not knowing what’s going to happen. We are scared that things could go wrong, that things will be uncomfortable, and that things might not go as expected. But taking a leap of faith and throwing yourself into the unknown can be very rewarding. It means that you fully surrender all expectations that you and others have ever had of yourself. It means that you allow yourself to start anew and feel completely free. You might realize down the track that you are who you are and that you have to go back to the root of your soul, to your innate talents and passion [but] without being held back by dogma, societal norms, your own fears, and external opinions.
It seems to me that regardless of where we land when making these big changes, through the process we will become wiser, more discerning, more resilient, clearer about who we are, and standing more deeply in our own presence.
Rosh Hashanah
Today is Rosh Hashanah (Sept. 6-8), the Jewish celebration of the New Year.
Shanna Tova.
May this year bring us sweetness, health, peace, sanity, and a sense of purpose.
In the Jewish traditions, fall is a time of beginnings and renewals, and is when the Jewish New Year, ‘Rosh Hashanah is celebrated. Autumn is when you harvest the field and prepare for winter. Yom Kippur, is also part of the high holidays of Autumn. Yom Kippur is the day of Atonement and it is about pardons and forgiveness. It is a tradition to go to the river and throw away the old and invite the new for the New Year. Another tradition of the New Year is to eat an apple with honey to invite the new year to be as sweet as honey.
Hold Me Tight® Workshop Update
As many of you know, we are battling some serious and scary fires out here in California. It is a fire season like we have never experienced. Each year with the drought, it gets bigger, and scarier. Our firefighters are doing amazing work!! I can not say enough about the gratitude I feel for the amazing work of Cal Fire and all those who are battling the flames to save our homes, our beloved landscapes, and the animals who depend on our natural environment.
Thank you to all of you who signed up, and referred friends, clients, and family to our in-person Hold Me Tight® Couples Workshop on August 21.
Although we had our good and safe Covid protocol in place and were Sold-Out weeks before our workshop, we had to cancel it at the last minute due to the River Fire that broke out that weekend and filled out skies with smoke, prevented us from holding much of the workshop in the outdoor as we had hoped to do. (Some of our couples who had signed up for the workshop months ahead of time were also being evacuated due to local fires.)
We were so sorry to cancel and are committed to all of our safety.
Our next Hold Me Tight® couples workshop will be here in beautiful Nevada City in Northern California on Saturday and Sunday, November 6-7, 2021.
Read a description of the workshop on the Hold Me Tight® Couples Workshop page, or in this article I wrote. If you want to attend our November 6-7, 2021 workshop, please go signup here. If we can not accommodate you in this upcoming workshop, we will be sure to add you to our waiting list and notify you as soon as we schedule the next one.
Hope we all have a safe and beautiful autumn. It is a beautiful season of change, renewal and hope.
Sending love to each and every one of you!
Dalia
Hold Me Tight® is a registered trademark of Sue Johnson, founder and originator of Emotionally Focused Therapy.