Re-framing Disruptions

How It Happened

While preparing for visitors, I was doing minor cleaning in the bathroom.  As I looked at the space I was working in, I noticed that it was a bit cluttered, so I put some things in the nearby cabinet.

After doing this, the sink area was less cluttered, but the soap dispenser, which had been on the far side of the items, remained where it had been, a distance from the sink itself.  When I looked at this, I realized that the dispenser had truly been in an inconvenient place, simply because when I put it there, other things were already closer to the sink, and I had just plopped it in the open area.

For months this had been the situation:  soap dispenser randomly placed without thought, while still being used regularly (and truthfully, more frequently than anything else).  It was only with the minor disruption of cleaning with an eye for visitors that I saw the opportunity to make changes – putting away some items, and finally moving the dispenser closer to the sink.

Understanding Disruption

We can easily forget to look, or do things without thought, and then be stuck and simply go on with what is now in our lives.  Habit, distraction, available time all impact, and inhibit, our ability and opportunity to make changes.

While hardly a crisis or a serious scenario, the dispenser situation illustrates that disruption (a visitor’s pending visit) is what forced me to look at my sink differently; to actually look at what was already in front of me, but I hadn’t really seen.  Only then did I recognize that I had, unintentionally, created more challenge and mess (reaching further for the soap each time) than necessary.

Disruption, by its nature, is generally pretty messy.  It will nearly always force a change, which of course as I’ve shared before, we often are resistant to.  Our habits, our patterns, and even our past beliefs or expectations, work to keep us where we are.

Disruption arrives to shake things up.  Unfortunately, the more deeply we are stuck, or unwilling to make changes on our own, the stronger the disruption needed to awaken us, to help us see what we can, or may need, to change in our lives.

Re-framing Disruption

Yes, disruptions are uncomfortable, messy, and often unpleasant to experience.  However, if we look at the role it truly plays, we can use it and gain from it.  Paying attention, being accepting of small disruptions when they happen, provides us the opportunity to implement changes ourselves, on our schedule, and with our own choices at the forefront.

Consistently ignoring the smaller, inconvenient disruptions means that they energy and pressure of being stuck, of not making changes ourselves, builds until it is only a larger, and more difficult, disruption that shakes us to awareness.

No, it’s not easy to reframe disruptions – it asks you to essentially welcome annoyances, messiness, and unexpected happenings.  But using these to take that moment to look at your space, your situation, you can see what is working, what isn’t as good, what may need to shift, or what you may need to let go of.

This shift, this look at what you have at that moment, can make all the difference in whether you stay stuck, or if you grow to more of the you in your heart, and who you want to be going forward.

Love, and until next time.