You are allowed to change your mind

I’m allowed to change my mind.

I’ve been repeating these six words to myself since Memorial Day weekend when I went on an exploratory trip to Minneapolis (3.5 hours north of the long term house sit I was doing) to “feel into” moving back.

I’m allowed to change my mind.

I’d been to Minneapolis a handful of times since leaving in 2018. Each time I was quick to dismiss the small internal voice wondering if part of me might like to move back.

I’m allowed to change my mind.

That exploratory, “feel into” the possibility of a move turned quickly into a tour of a dreamy, quirky apartment near a lake, a lease signed, and a frenzy of packing, finishing up the caretaker gig, and moving. 

Moving back.

OMG: I moved back to the place I left.

I was gone for six years, one serious breakup, three moves across state lines, five short-term rentals, and six long-term house sits.

I was away when the pandemic started. I was away as I examined what I really wanted to do for paid work. I started my coaching practice from a coworking space in my hometown, a place I never thought I’d live as an adult and ended up loving (for a year).

I left a place I thought of as home when change beckoned me elsewhere. And then I changed...and changed...and kept changing.

Can I now accept that some of those changes are precisely what are calling me back?

I’m allowed to change my mind.

Some of my resistance to acceptance is that I’ve had more mind-changing moments in these six years than have felt comfortable. I’ve said yes to discover I actually meant no. I’ve gone all in on one thing to remember all or nothing is a disaster for me. (I can’t help it: I truly love that messy middle place!)

Over and over again I’ve had to remind myself that I’m allowed to change my mind because…I’m changing my mind a lot.

And I'm not sure I feel as comfortable giving myself that much permission!

So when I found myself seriously letting myself consider that I wanted to “move back” to Minnesota, I found myself facing all my choices that resulted in so much movement. I found myself a bit ashamed of all the changes, all the reconsidering.

Am I really allowed to change my mind that much?

I’ve been trying to position myself towards a new understanding that change at times means returning, going back. And that to dismiss this reality is to close off my imagination to all the fantastic shifts and ways of creating a life that are available. 

I am really allowed to change my mind as much as I want!

Maybe it’s the language that’s limiting me as much as the experience. Because I am returning to the same yet different place as a same yet different version of myself. There needs to be distinct language for "returns" like these.

And further:

I do believe a messy, meandering path is valid.

I do wonder who I'm seeking approval and permission from anyhow!

I wrote this a year ago. I knew I’d need a reminder.

I know now that many of my needs were clarified by leaving everything I knew intimately, by shifting over and over again. I know now that many of my needs were clarified by a pandemic. Shaking up familiar routine and expectation had an illuminating effect.

I told my coach that I needed to leave. One of the reasons I had to leave was to discover what could possibly bring me back.

I left and discovered more about what I choose when I am drawing on deep clarity and alignment.

So now – like an astronaut returning to earth after months in space – I’m navigating the complexity of re-entry. I am finding my footing again. Gravity takes relearning. Earth is not exactly as I remember. I am not exactly as I remember, here in this place.

New and novel sits alongside familiar. All the learning, shifting, and growing from these six years “away” also clarifies what is solid is me, what’s the same.

Can I let this return be spacious? Can I let it feel more like a curious ellipses and less like a slightly embarrassed period? It certainly isn't the last change I'll be making...that much is certain! 

Embracing that my changes aren't over allows me to stop forcing meaning while I am still in process. 

You are allowed to change your mind.

Unfolding, evolving, imperfect, continuous transformation is a core part of coaching. The phrase "you are allowed to change your mind" is one I've said to most of my clients. An essential way I show up for my clients is being a voice of radical encouragement for what wants to emerge, move, pivot, crumble, die, blossom, flourish, fade.

My own challenge with a change that brings me back has me thinking about how to hold change lightly in the coaching space. How to not take change too seriously. Being rigid about change can have the undesired impact of narrowing the scope of what we think is possible for us. 

Staying open-minded is more difficult when we create definitive rules about the type, range, and quantity of transformation that is appropriate / right / acceptable. 

We are allowed to make big, bold, changes – changes we announce to everyone in our lives, changes we figuratively scream from the rooftops (or literally scream about). And we are allowed to get inside that big transformation and say to ourselves: “Hmm, not all of this is working for me; not all of this is what I want (anymore). I am going to change again.”

I frame a lot of the changes we explore in coaching as a “playground” or “experiment.” Intuitively I’ve wanted to bring some lightness to doing things differently, an acceptance of impermanence.

I’m so disinterested in the narrow success/failure binary and yet I recognize in myself and my clients that a change bringing us back might feel like failure.

What other framings are available to us in these moments when we are questioning if we are allowed to change again?

What wisdom do we call on when we find ourselves questioning if there is a limit to how much change we are allowed in our lifetime?

How about: "failure," false starts, do-overs, and mistakes mean we are trying (and trying is enlivening); being willing to experiment is an achievement; we love ourselves and our lives enough to leap without knowing how it will all turn out.

Some of what I adore about humans is our creativity, our flexibility, our capacity to shift so much. That our minds can stay open to so many ways our lives can unfold. How amazing to be able to realign over and over!

You can change your mind. 

You can change. 

You can change as many times as you need to change. 

You can be gentle with yourself when your changes and choices feel contradictory. 

You are creative, resourceful and whole enough to weather the complexity of being an ever-evolving being.