How good are you at ‘holding space’ for someone?
I know it’s kind of a vague term, but in the context I’m talking about, ‘holding space’ for someone means your ability to disconnect all of your wants, needs, judgments and values from your interactions with them, and allowing the person in front of you to express themselves, or be themselves, without fear of your judgment, your opinions, and sometimes even your advice.
I’m a point on my journey where withholding judgment is often easier than withholding advice.
I often use the term ‘journey’ to describe the process of personal development, which is really personal growth, and yet the funny thing is that ‘growth’ really comes in the form of becoming smaller in your needs, your wants, your definitions.
The further you are on your journey, the less you need to have, knowing that you are more than enough just being able to be.
So how far are you on your journey?
It’s tough to answer isn’t it? Earlier in my journey, I would try to come up with some idea of a percentage of improvement or growth, and yet with each new iteration of my soul, I realize that there is more and more to change, and the ‘percentage’ of my progress seemed to be less after each significant period of growth.
It felt like I couldn’t win, until I realized that I didn’t have to.
I just had to be me.
“But wait a minute” you say…. “That sounds like a contradiction. You’re saying that you just have to be yourself, and yet you’re also saying that you’re on a journey of change, from who you are into who you are going to be. That makes no sense to me”… and you’d be right, and yet also completely wrong.
The reality is that being me, and changing me, is all just one state of being me.
It’s very possible on your journey of changing and yet being who you are that you can become frustrated by what seems to be a lack of progress. Maybe it’s a habit that you can’t seem to shake, or an emotional pattern that you seem unable to break.
It’s very easy to become irritated by the day to day struggle of trying to find your way through your process, and forget that the act of changing is the nature of growth.
You just need to remember that giving yourself time is really a way of giving yourself space.
And maybe that’s a difficult concept for you in yourself. I wrote last week about giving yourself grace, which is really just forgiveness for times when you felt like you weren’t enough, but giving yourself space is really about accepting yourself in the absence of your needs, your judgments, your want and your fears.
And also about giving yourself time.
Because the truth is that all of us will pass from this life into whatever comes next with things left undone, and parts of our souls that will still be limited by what it means to be human.
Yet that does not diminish the worth or the divinity within us, but rather it allows us to understand that imperfection is a part of all of us, and that being imperfect, we are all still being enough.
And enough is a perfect place to be, or to start.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings