It’s so tempting to stop pursuing changes in your life when you are feeling confused. The sensible thing to do seems to be to wait it out while you gather your thoughts. As my mother always told me when I was little – “if you get lost, just stop, wait where you are”.
But what if this isn’t always the best approach?
When we are dealing with an over-active safe-keeping self confusion can actually be a way of keeping you stuck. You stop and wait, trying to gather your thoughts, all the while growing more confused and distressed. Worst of all you start doubting even those things you should be sure of. As a little kid, lost in a mall you start thinking perhaps you should go look in the food-court, perhaps you should go back to the car, perhaps no-one really cares that you are lost, perhaps…. You start wandering around but without any purpose, you get another bright idea to try the department store. Your situation gets worse and you can’t find a way out.
Bolles suggests that when the safe-keeping self is using confusion as a way of keeping you ’stuck’ the best remedy is not to focus on what you don’t know, but to try to anchor yourself in what you do know. Try to figure out what it is that you can hold on to with certainty, even while confusion wails around you like the Sirens around Ulysses. Hold on to that one thing tenaciously, even if it is as simple as “I am unhappy”. This will be the ground that you can build your changes upon.
And remember that your mother didn’t only say “if you get lost, just stop, wait where you are,” she also said “I’ll find you”.
